From the French press

French elections

France is urged: Just say Non

How Le Pen ripped up the electoral map

Shock waves spread across Europe, while Austria gloats

How the extremists have thrown another rock in the pool

Misery and malice in town that deserted Jospin

Where people live in fear and idolise a racist

Blair: We have to reconnect with voters

The words and policies of Jean-Marie Le Pen

Donald Macintyre: The left will have to wake up

John Lichfield: Why does France find it hard to face the future?

Leading article: Le Pen has thrown down a gauntlet

From a leading article in 'Libération'

*A terrible France has triumphed. The Jospin-left alliance has committed political suicide and is dead in the water and the second round will be a head to head between the caricatures of SuperLiar and SuperFascist. The French political system has imploded.

Leading a single-issue campaign (crime) Chirac opened up a Pandora's box.

Jospin got trapped by this insistent adherence to one theme, and stuck so closely to his rival in this that his separate identity was lost. He missed the opportunity to vaunt his own fairly successful record on social and economic issues.

And so an honest man has been eliminated by a discredited President with no record to speak of and an authoritarian and racist little blond man.

Le Pen, without having to do the least bit of campaigning for himself, benefited from abstention and desertion from the socialists to play the game more astutely than Jospin, and massacre the left.

Such campaigns and results are hardly glorious for our country.

The political landscape is shaken, traumatised, murdered.

French democracy is comatose.

From a commentary in 'Le Parisien'

*What word could describe the events of yesterday? What has happened is more than a simple earthquake. Here you have France arse-about-face. (Voici la France cul par-dessus tete) The duel between Chirac and Le Pen, two men who have hated each other for 30 years, is just what the far-right candidate would want. Clever and bitter, he has set aside any attempt at actually defending his ideas and set himself up in the role of martyr because it masks the vengeful nature of the party that he represents, who attack at left and right indiscriminately and with violence. Many people are said to be disappointed with Jospin. But that doesn't fully explain what has happened. Rather the splitting of the left-wing vote and the collapse of the Communists has allowed in the over-exploitation of right-wing themes to the point where the earth has trembled.

From a leading article in 'Le Figaro'

* A demolition has taken place. The historic defeat of the left and the arrival of the far-right candidate in the second round has completely upset the usual run of things, the expected battle between left and right.

And it says a lot about the gap between politicians and the electorate, who can find nothing in the political debate that corresponds to the realities of their own lives, especially from the overly-plural left, who lacked courage and vision and thought the French couldn't cope with the truth. It is clear from the response of the French that Jacques Chirac was not over-playing the "insecurité" issue.

Amid the stupor of some and the sadness of others questions must be asked.

Why, after five years at the Matignon, did Lionel Jospin suffer such a huge defeat? Jacques Chirac's success in the second round is assured but what sort of politics should be proposed and put in place, to put back together a country fractured and ravaged by exasperation?

The National Front will be stronger in the parliamentary elections this year than in 1997. For Jacques Chirac, the battle of those parliamentary elections starts today.

From a leading article in 'Ouest France'

*Most French people are stupefied by the results. It was always possible that one day the political extremes would break out.

But who would have believed, a few weeks ago, that the candidates of the left, of the Socialist Party, wouldn't be in the second round? It isn't enough to say that the left has been punished. It isn't enough either to note that the outgoing President did worse than any of his predecessors. We must find explanations.

The reasons have been well aired by politicians of all camps, interviewed in the course of Sunday night. Weariness, disarray, crime, fear, the gap between politicians and the people, insufficient or erroneous solutions to numerous problems and, for a long time, a heavy bureaucratic burden provoking exasperation.

However, despite all of this, our country has a future. It isn't failing. It has many reasons to be positive.

From a leading article in 'Le Monde'

* France is wounded. And, for many French people, humiliated.

We so stubbornly wanted and painstakingly constructed the Europe Union, but now, because of this presidential election, marked by the political crowning of the sinister demagogue, the leader of the French far-right, France has given the impression of a country that is introspective, narrow-minded, haunted by its own decline, even scared of its own children, especially those who happen to live in the suburbs.

Europe today is heading more towards the right, and unfortunately we have just seen France align itself at the front of this movement and even on the far-right of it, by putting a National Front candidate through to the second round for the first time in the party's history. So yes, it is sad but true, things are looking bleak for France.