EU Commissioner: Number of People Backing Le Pen in French Election Frightening

"Polls give [Macron] almost two-thirds of the electorate in a run-off with Le Pen, while the defeated establishment parties have now rowed in behind his campaign", said David McNamara, an economist with Davy.

French far-right presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen has announced that she is temporarily stepping down as her party's leader.

The defeated far-left candidate, Jean-Luc Melenchon, pointedly refused to back Macron, and Le Pen's National Front is hoping to do the once unthinkable and peel away voters historically opposed to a party long tainted by racism and anti-Semitism. It seemed that the presidential election would be a breeze as they expected their candidate to face Hollande, the most unpopular president of the Fifth Republic.

The shared currency gained as much as 2 percent in Tokyo to 1.0937 dollars.

"We are in nearly ideal opposition on all points", Florian Philippot, the party's vice-president, told France 2 television on Monday.

But Macron's party spokesman, Benjamin Griveaux, said that Le Pen is hardly a vector of change.

France's divided political mainstream, rejected by an angry electorate, united Monday to urge voters to back Macron and reject Le Pen's far-right agenda. She has courted young voters by running the FN like a nimble startup, while also taking up traditionally left-wing causes, such as women's rights, and championing the welfare state (albeit for French citizens, and not foreigners).

EU Commissioner: Number of People Backing Le Pen in French Election Frightening

Protesters burned cars, danced around bonfires and dodged riot police overnight at the Place de la Bastille and Republique.

Voters narrowed the French presidential field from 11 to two in Sunday's first-round vote, and losers from across the spectrum called on their supporters to choose Macron in round two.

Russian Federation has appeared as a keen backer of Le Pen, who met President Vladimir Putin during a surprise visit to Moscow ahead of the vote. He said that they express a choice "outside the system".

The centrist Macron and populist Marine Le Pen will go onto a second round vote, with Macron favoured to win. Twenty-nine people were detained at the Bastille, where protesters waved red flags and sang "No Marine and No Macron!"

Those figures soothed investors who have been unnerved by Le Pen's pledges to ditch the euro, print money and possibly quit the European Union, and were nervous of another anti-establishment upheaval to follow Britain's "Brexit" vote and Donald Trump's election as USA president.

Macron's En Marche movement is struggling to find suitable candidates for those elections and doesn't have the grassroots network that Les Republicains, the Socialist Party or Le Pen's Front National can draw upon.