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Centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron has won the French presidential election, beating the far-right National Front’s Marine Le Pen by a decisive margin. But this is just the first step for Macron who wants to reform the European Union as well as revive his country’s fortunes. The first thing he needs to do, argues Richard Maher, is unite his fractured country.
And in a presidential election with an entirely different set of concerns, South Koreans will go to the polls tomorrow. The winner – most likely to be Moon Jae-in of the Minjoo Party – is going to have a full plate of geopolitical and domestic issues to deal with, says Eunjung Lim.
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Emmanuel Macron, who will soon become eighth president of the Fifth French Republic.
Christian Hartmann/Reuters
Richard Maher, European University Institute
Macron's win showed France is internationalist, outward looking, pro-EU and free market-oriented; Le Pen's rise revealed that it's also nationalist, protectionist, anti-EU and suspicious of outsiders.
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Politics + Society
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Eunjung Lim, Johns Hopkins University
Balancing domestic expectations and delicate relations with neighbours while trying to deal with North Korea's race to become a nuclear power will make for a challenging five-year term.
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Donatella Della Porta, Institute of Human and Social sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence ; Luis Gómez Romero, University of Wollongong; Simon P. Watmough, European University Institute
The Conversation Global asked scholars from around the world what they thought of Emmanuel Macron's victory, and what means for their country.
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Olivier Ihl, Sciences Po Grenoble
Never before in French presidential elections have commentators and pundits expressed alarming concern about the size of the blank voting.
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Altaf Khan, University of Peshawar
French voters should understand what it means to live in a country where autocratic populism is the rule.
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Business + Economy
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Caroline Schuster, Australian National University
The heist and free trade are just opposite sides of the same coin.
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Environment + Energy
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Simon Klein, Université de Toulouse 3 Paul Sabatier; Andrew Barron, Macquarie University
It's a decade since US beekeepers first noticed that their bees were mysteriously dying. Now we know much more about Colony Collapse Disorder, raising hopes that we can turn bees' fortunes around.
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