PARIS—French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has announced that she is temporarily stepping down as head of her National Front party.Monday’s move appears to be a way for Le Pen to embrace a wide range of potential voters ahead of the May 7 runoff between herself and Emmanuel Macron, the independent centrist who came in first in Sunday’s first round.“Tonight, I am no longer the president of the National Front. I am the presidential candidate,” she said on French public television news.Le Pen has said in the past that she is not a candidate of her party, and made that point when she rolled out her platform in February, saying the measures she was espousing were not her party’s, but her own.Le Pen has worked to bring in voters from the left and right for several years, cleaning up her party’s racist, anti-Semitic image to do so.Earlier in the day Europe rejoiced and stock markets surged after independent candidate Emmanuel Macron won the first round of the French Presidential elections on Sunday to face Marine Le Pen of the extreme right National Front in the May 7 runoff.Read More: Stock markets rally with Emmanuel Macron in lead to be French presidentFrance’s next president: centrist Macron or far-right Le PenIn an exceptional stance during an ongoing campaign, EU spokesman Margaritis Schinas threw its weight behind Macron, saying that “the choice was a fundamental one.” He said Macron represents pro-European values while Le Pen “seeks its destruction.”Macron came in first in Sunday’s vote, with just over 23 per cent; Le Pen had 21 per cent; Jean-Luc Melenchon and François Fillon each had 19 per cent. Fillon, a former prime minister, bested the former Trotskyist Melenchon by just 94,998 votes.The euro had risen strongly on Sunday night, when it begins trading during Asian currency market hours. It had risen 2 per cent but later eased back slightly to be 1.2 per c ...
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