France has awoken to a new era after electing Socialist Francois Hollande as president, a leftist pledging to buck Europe's austerity trend and NATO's timetable for Afghanistan.
After an appearance before thronging crowds on Paris' Place de la Bastille in the early morning hours Monday during which he pledged "to finish with austerity," Hollande was back at work, arriving at his campaign headquarters around 10:30 a.m. local time.
Hollande will officially become president on May 15, the date for the handover ceremony that the two campaign teams agreed on Monday.
Before then, the president-elect is due to appear alongside Sarkozy at a ceremony Tuesday marking the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.
Hollande has his work cut out to fulfill the hopes his victory has stirred on France's Left, overjoyed to have one of their own in power for the first time since Socialist Francois Mitterrand was president from 1981 to 1995.
President Barack Obama has already extended Hollande an invitation to the White House ahead of this month's summit of the Group of Eight leading economies at Camp David, Maryland. After that, Hollande will attend a NATO summit in Chicago, where he will announce he is pulling French troops out of Afghanistan by the end of the year.
Among the other international leaders calling to congratulate Hollande was Germany's Angela Merkel, who told reporters in Berlin on Monday that she and Hollande had spoken for the first time late Sunday.
"We said we will work well and intensively together," she said. Merkel has invited Hollande to come to Germany after his inauguration.
Merkel cautioned against hopes that the austerity measures already agreed by European leaders could now be renegotiated. "We in Germany, and I personally, believe the fiscal pact is not up for negotiation," she said.
While some market players have worried about a Hollande presidency, the rating agency Standard and Poor's said his election "has no immediate impact" on France's AA+ credit rating or negative outlook.
Sarkozy is now the latest victim of a wave of voter anger over spending cuts in Europe that has ousted governments and leaders in the past couple of years.
Final results from France's presidential election show Hollande narrowly defeated Sarkozy with 51.62 percent of the vote, or 1.13 million of the 37 million votes cast in Sunday's election.
Sarkozy, who finished the first round about half-a-million votes behind Hollande, failed in his bid to attract sufficient votes from supporters of far-right leader Marine Le Pen.
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