Socialists win majority of seats in parliament

French president François Hollande’s Socialists won an absolute parliamentary majority yesterday, strengthening his hand as he…

French president François Hollande’s Socialists won an absolute parliamentary majority yesterday, strengthening his hand as he presses Germany to support debt-laden euro zone states hit by austerity cuts and ailing banks.

The Socialist bloc secured 320 seats in the parliamentary election run-off, according to reliable projections, comfortably more than the 289 needed for a majority in the 577-seat National Assembly.

The result means Mr Hollande won’t need to rely on the environmentalist Greens, projected to win 20 seats, or the communist-dominated Left Front, likely to have just 10 deputies, to pass laws. The centre-left already controls the upper house of parliament, the Senate.

The far-right, anti-immigration National Front achieved a breakthrough, winning its first parliamentary seats since the late-1980s.

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Its charismatic leader, Marine Le Pen, narrowly lost her race in a working-class northern town, but Marion Maréchal Le Pen (22), granddaughter of the party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, was elected in the southern town of Carpentras.

The left-wing triumph gives the Socialists more power than they have ever held as Mr Hollande pushes for new tools to stimulate growth in the euro zone and a European banking union that would protect depositors and states if banks fail.

Political turmoil in Greece is piling pressure on Europe’s leaders to act to contain the bloc’s debt crisis at a summit later this month.

Yesterday’s victory may help Mr Hollande secure parliamentary backing for steps towards a euro zone fiscal union that Berlin is demanding as a condition for agreeing to his push for a growth pact and reforms to improve financial stability.

Mr Hollande, a pro-European social democrat, has broken with a Franco-German power duopoly established under predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy.

He is siding with southern euro-zone states, calling for more flexibility on deficit targets.

He also wants a European banking union giving the European Central Bank power to supervise cross-border banks, with a joint deposit guarantee and a resolution fund.

The parliamentary win, coming despite a low turnout of 46.2 per cent, leaves Mr Hollande free of having to rely on opposition conservatives or Eurosceptic hard leftists and should also leave his largely social democratic and pro-Europe cabinet intact. He can also count on the backing of deputies from the Green Party.

Mr Hollande needs every lawmaker’s vote he can get if a public finance audit due by end-June shows France must slow its spending promises to meet its deficit goals.

However one key supporter, his former companion Ségolène Royal, was beaten yesterday by a left-wing rebel backed by Mr Hollande’s current partner, in the western city of La Rochelle.

Ms Royal’s defeat could create an awkward problem for him in finding her a face-saving role.

The president also needs to keep Eurosceptical Socialist deputies behind him if he agrees to Germany’s demand for deeper political integration in the euro zone. – (Reuters)