US President Donald Trump congratulated emmanuel macron on Sunday on his "big win" in the French presidential election.

"Congratulations to Emmanuel Macron on today's big win in the election for the new French president," the Republican president wrote on Twitter. "I can not wait to cooperate with him," he said. The White House has said it wants to co-operate with the new president and continue its "close cooperation with the French government."

Who is Emmanuel Macron?

Emmanuel Macron, a 39-year-old former banker from Amiens, won Sunday's presidential election and became the youngest French state leader since Napoleon.

Macron is a social liberal who offers a vision of an empowered, competitive French economy, open to the world. He says that he is neither left nor right, and his office in Elize Palace has won by opposing himself to the political elite, even though he himself came from it. When he decided to use his investment banker's skills in the political arena and become an advisor to President Francois Hollande in 2012, it seemed that Macron was being dazzled by the rise of the traditional establishment.

But after just two years of ministerial career (2014-2016) he leaves the Socialist Party. After that, he founded his En Marche movement! (Forward!) and as a political outsider and an independent candidate for the center, moves into the presidential race, sending strong messages to the elite to which he belongs.

Macron has not been elected to any political office so far, and at the beginning of the campaign, his opponents have been ridiculing him. "I'm sure the French people will not put their fate in the hands of a man without experience, who has not shown anything to date," Francois Fillon said.

Reducing the gap between left and right

Feeling dissatisfied with the "status quo in the country," he announced that he would break the establishment, even though he himself attended prestigious French schools, was earning a living as a Rothschild's banker and was Hollande's Minister of the Economy.

"France has been blocked because of its elite tendency to serve itself," he said to supporters at a gathering in Pau. "And I know it because I was a part of it."

Macron graduated from the elite Paris Institute of Political Science and then mastered philosophy. He continued education at the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA), where the leading French bureaucrats are trained. He worked for four years as an inspector (2004-2008) and then spent the next four years at Rothschild's bank.

He claims that his ambition is to overcome the traditional division between left and right, which is dominating the French politics for too long now. He promises investment in the education of young and unemployed, and the transition to clean energy.

Macron is married to Brigitte Trogneux, who had been his high school teacher since the age of sixteen. The bond began when he became of age. Given the age difference between them (24 years), their marriage was often covered by the glossy magazines.
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