French President Nicolas Sarkozy won a solid majority in parliamentary elections but has fallen short of winning a predicted landslide for the right.
Mr Sarkozy's UMP party will face little resistance to the measures he plans to introduce within weeks in a bid to make France's sluggish economy more competitive and less protective.
But yesterday's legislative runoff suggests that voters in France, long driven by leftist ideals, wanted to send the president a message that his powers are not absolute, and to keep their concerns in mind.
Some have even predicted mass street protests - such as those that stymied former president Jacques Chirac's efforts to free up the economy - or violence in France's housing projects if Mr Sarkozy goes too far, too fast.
Mr Sarkozy's party and its allies won 346 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly, which was fewer than the 359 seats the UMP used to have. The opposition left took a better-than-expected 226 seats total, led by the Socialists' 185 seats - a considerable improvement to the party's 149 seats in the last parliament.
Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande said that his party had resurrected itself. "It's good for the country," he said. "France will walk on both legs."
It marked the first political stumble for the Mr Sarkozy (52) since he was elected president last month. In another blow to the new president, environment and energy minister Alain Juppe lost his race to a Socialist challenger and announced that he would resign today, meaning Mr Sarkozy faces the prospect of reshuffling his month-old government.
Last week's first round of voting had left the Socialists expecting just more than 100 seats, while the buoyant UMP was looking forward to the strongest parliamentary majority in the history of modern France.
Despite the UMP's weaker-than-predicted performance, the result was the first time in nearly three decades that voters returned an outgoing parliamentary majority to power.
Prime Minister Francois Fillon said the right would waste no time in using its majority to "resolutely modernise" France, approving reforms on labour, employment, consumer spending, law and order, universities, immigration and reducing the disruption caused by strikes.
"We don't want to wait any longer to launch the renovation that the French are calling for," he said. "We will reform, we will renovate, we will experiment with new ideas. . . . We will get rid of the defeatism that is suffocating the republic."
Mr Sarkozy's has scheduled an extraordinary session of the new parliament starting June 26th.
AP