French elections see swing to right

UMP leader Nicolas Sarkozy said voters had rejected the policies of President Hollande

France's opposition conservative UMP Party has made big gains in local elections, at the expense of the ruling Socialists.

The UMP, led by former President Nicolas Sarkozy, boosted the councils it controls from 40 to 67 in the vote.

President Francois Hollande's Socialists and other leftists won 34 councils - down from 61 previously.

Marine Le Pen's far-right National Front (FN) won at least 60 seats but failed to get control of any council.

The elections are seen as a key test of public opinion ahead of the 2017 presidential election.

Paris and Lyon, France's two biggest cities, did not take part in Sunday's election.

Mr Sarkozy, who secured the UMP leadership last November, said "never... has our political family won so many councils".

He told his supporters that voters had "massively rejected the policies of Francois Hollande and his government".

Bastions of the Socialists like the Nord department around Lille swung to the right, as did President Hollande's own fiefdom of the Correze in central France.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the vote reflected economic hardship

Marine Le Pen said the results were a "magnificent success" for her party

However, as ever in France's two-round elections, voters from left and right united in round two to keep the FN from power, the BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris reports.

Ms Le Pen hailed a "historic" day for the FN, saying: "I thank all our voters for this magnificent success."

"The goal is near, reaching power and applying our ideas to redress France."

The FN made especially strong gains in Pas-de-Calais, in the far north, and Gard, in the south.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the French people "have declared... their anger at a daily life that is too difficult". He vowed to redouble efforts to boost the economy, and said his focus was "jobs, jobs, jobs".

He added that the rise in the FN's popularity was "a sign of a lasting upheaval of our political landscape and we will all need to draw lessons from it".

Half of the 40-million-strong French electorate abstained from voting - a figure that was however better than the 55.3% abstention rate in the last local elections in 2011.

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