Key dates for the Macron presidency

Winning the French presidency is just the beginning. On Monday Emmanuel Macron, the incoming president of the Fifth Republic, will step down as leader of his new political movement En Marche and turn his attention towards building a stable majority in the National Assembly elections next month from a party that as yet has no MPs.

Here are the key dates in the weeks ahead:

May 14: President François Hollande will hand over power to Mr Macron, his one-time protégé and former economy minister in the socialist government.

Once Mr Macron is officially ensconced in the Elysée Palace he is expected to move quickly to form a government. He has said that his first administration will be made up of 14 ministers reporting to an experienced prime minister.

Mr Macron is likely to tap a pool of thirtysomething advisers and a group of political heavyweights who have been early supporters of his year-old political movement En Marche.

Expect to see a formal role for his wife Brigitte Trogneux — the first time that there has been an official “First Lady of France”.

May 15-19: Candidates for the legislative elections must declare their candidacy during this period. Mr Macron has promised political renewal and a party that is neither on the left nor the right. To achieve this, he has said that at least half the candidates would have to be new faces from civil society with no political affiliation and half would have to be women.

Mr Macron and his team will have to pick from the 15,000 or so applications they have received online, and while candidates from a party are welcome, they will be expected to drop any other political affiliations.

Mr Macron said in January: “They can be Socialists, radicals, ecologists, centrists or Republicans, as long as they agree with our platform. There won’t be any deal with political parties. I won’t trade a constituency for political support.”

June 11 and 18: The legislative elections for the National Assembly are scheduled to take place during a two-round first-past-the-post system. All 577 posts are up for grabs.

En Marche, which as yet has no elected MPs, has vowed to field candidates in every seat. To secure a majority, Mr Macron would need to win 290 seats. If he fails to achieve a majority, he is likely to seek a coalition with one of the other parties.

Winning a majority will not be easy: the centre-right Republican party will be jostling to demonstrate its power and relevancy after failing to reach the second round of the election, and National Front (FN) leader Marine Le Pen, who lost out to Mr Macron in Sunday’s second round presidential run-off, has vowed to continue the battle between “patriots and globalists”.

However, an Opinionway-SLPV Analytics poll last week suggested En Marche could win between 249 and 286 National Assembly seats, making it the largest party. The FN, meanwhile, would win just 15 to 25 seats, according to the poll.

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