Emmanuel Macron inaugurated as France’s new president

Emmanuel Macron was on Sunday inaugurated as France’s new president in a ceremony held at the Elysee Palace in Paris after defeating far-right leader Marine Le Pen in last week's run-off election to become the eighth president of France’s Fifth Republic, which was created in 1958.

Macron, 39 the first French president to be born after 1958 when President Charles de Gaulle put in place the Fifth Republic will also become the country's youngest president in history since Napoleon.

A former banker and an economy minister with pro-business, pro-European views, Macron is the first French president who doesn’t originate from the country’s two mainstream parties.

In his short speech to mark the occasion, Macron vowed to restore the country's status and heal divisions following a bitter campaign and encouraged the French people to embrace the future, to hold him to a high standard and to join him in the hard work ahead.

“I reassure you that not for a single second did I think that everything changed as if by magic on May 7,” he said of the day he was elected.

“This will be slow work, demanding, but indispensable. It will be up to me to convince the French that our country, which seems threatened by the sometimes contrary winds of the world, carries in its heart all the resources to be a nation of the first rank.”

The first-time politician,said his presidency would be guided by two concerns: finding ways to help the French “have confidence in themselves again” and making France prosperous and strong.