Never even contested an election before this year. It really has been an astonishing year in french politics. Emmanuel macron, the young, fresh phrased, road business, ardent european. About to be inaugurated pro business. He trounced his rivals in the elections, a resounding vote in support of a man who only set up his en marche party about a year ago. We are already hearing, by the way, just you know, just to let you know, that we will expect him to appoint his Prime Minister to morrow. We have heard that in the last few minutes. The Prime Minister will be appointed tomorrow and the government will be formed on tuesday. That is what sources close to Emmanuel Macron are telling us. That is the scene there in Central Paris, as we await the formalities of the inauguration and, of course, the french do these things with wonderful and grandeur and lets go to my colleague who was there watching it all unfold. A rather drizzly morning there in paris, we can tell from your umbrella 7 drizzly
hildegard knef s wistful song talking about teenage ambition, but. ..this one. punk legend nina hagen s 1974 hit in which a girlfriend scolds a boyfriend for using black and white, not colour camera film on holiday. interpreted as a criticism of the grey days in the former communist east germany where merkel grew up. the door officially closes on angela merkel s time next week when power transfers to the head of a rival party, the social democrat, olaf scholz. when a new chapter in german and possibly european politics begins amid a growing covid crisis in the country. mark lobel, bbc news. stay with us on bbc news. still to come: we meet the designers of a new safety app helping to combat
that. chris, i got to the point so many good people up here, both democrats and republicans. they re all my friends. i work with them. when you get us together, it sounds like we make sense. we want things to work. and all of a sudden all the power transfers to two people, the majority leader and minority leader who makes a decision what moves and doesn t move. the majority sets the agenda. i keep thinking my be loved robert c. byrd laying in his grave, he s got to be twisting and turning thinking how did we get to this. we ve got to come back to regular order and where other senators have input and our voices are heard. we re able to move the dialogue. that s where you saw the common sense coalition come together with susan collins and so many democrats and republicans. we had 25 senators about equally divided, ds and rs who want the place to work and make sense and understands there s a pathway forward. that s what we ve been working