France 2012 | Far right holds balance after Hollande edges past Sarkozy

France 2 announcing the exit poll result at close of all polling stations at 8pm

Centre-left socialist leader Hollande narrowly beat Sarkozy in yesterday's 10-candidate first round by 28.6 percent to 27.1 percent, but Le Pen stole the show by surging to 18.0 percent, the biggest result for a far-right candidate.

Le Pen's breakthrough mirrored advances by anti-establishment Eurosceptic populists from Amsterdam and Vienna to Helsinki and Athens as anger over austerity, unemployment and bailout fatigue deepen due to the euro zone's grinding debt crisis.

"The battle of France has only just begun," Le Pen, 43, daughter of former paratrooper and National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, told cheering supporters last night.

Declaring that her wave of support was "shaking the system" of mainstream consensus politics, she said: "Nothing will be the same again."

The gravel-voiced blonde, who wants France to abandon the euro currency, said she would give her view on the runoff at a May Day rally in Paris next week. But she saved most venom for Sarkozy, aiming to pick up the pieces in any recomposition of the right and hoping the Front can enter parliament in June.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy addressing his supporters in Paris soon after results were out last night

National Front Vice-President Louis Alliot suggested this morning that Le Pen would not formally endorse either candidate "as things stand". "Based on the ideas in our program, neither one defends or develops them, so it seems unlikely," he said.

Amid strong turnout, more than one third of voters cast ballots for protest candidates outside the political mainstream.

The unpopular Sarkozy, the first sitting president to be forced into second place in the first round of a re-election bid, will have to attempt a difficult balancing act to attract both the far-right and centrist voters he needs to win the May 6 runoff.

After five years of leading the world's fifth economy, a nuclear power and activist U.N. Security Council member, he could go the way of 10 other euro zone leaders swept from office since the start of the crisis in late 2009.

Hollande, 57, who opinion polls taken yesterday showed winning the decider with between 53 and 56 percent of the vote, vowed to change the direction of Europe if elected and lead an economic revival with greater social justice.

"My final duty, and I know I'm being watched from beyond our borders, is to put Europe back on the path of growth and employment," he told supporters in his constituency of Tulle in southwestern France.

Financial market analysts say whoever wins in two weeks' time will have to impose tougher austerity measures than either candidate has admitted during the campaign, cutting public spending as well as raising taxes to cut the budget deficit.

A parliamentary election to be held in June will further determine the complexion of the next French government.

The euro retreated from two-week highs against the dollar this morning, pausing after its best weekly performance since February, and investors said French debt markets were likely to continue a recent run of weakness.

Meanwhile, Nicolas Sarkozy struck a defiant tone after his setback, steering to the right to try to attract Le Pen voters by vowing to tighten border controls, stop factories leaving France, make work pay and uphold law and order, rather than reaching out to centrists.

He challenged Hollande to three live television debates over the next two weeks instead of the customary one. But Socialist aides said Hollande, who has no ministerial experience and is a less accomplished television performer than Sarkozy, had made clear he will accept only one prime-time debate, on May 2.