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PARIS, Monday (AFP)

Supporters of President Jacques Chirac were Monday celebrating their victory over the left in parliamentary elections, and preparing the next steps for their full assumption of political power.

Interim Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, whose Union for the Presidential Majority (UMP) led the centre-right into Sunday's triumph, was due to meet Chirac to present his government's resignation in accordance with electoral rules.

He was expected to be immediately re-appointed and to present a lightly reshuffled cabinet for presidential approval on Tuesday.

The UMP and its junior partner the Union for French Democracy (UDF) won a clear overall majority in the election, bringing to an end the five year period in which Chirac, 69, has had to cope with a hostile left-wing legislature.

The victory means the president has a clear election-free run of five years in which to implement campaign pledges to clamp down on crime, reduce taxes, cut back the state bureaucracy, increase defense spending and modernise the country's pension system.

"We have a duty not to disappoint," Raffarin, 53, told cheering supporters after the results were announced Sunday evening.

The results also confirmed a growing trend towards the centre-right across the European Union, where this year elections in Portugal, the Netherlands, Ireland and Denmark have pointed up a rejection of Socialist policies.

Computer projections gave the centre-right around 400 seats in the 577-member Assembly, with the remainder going to the defeated Socialists and their Communist and Green party former coalition partners.

Penalised by the single-winner constituency system, the far-right National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen seemed unlikely once again to win any seats - despite his first round breakthrough in the recent presidential elections.

Socialist party secretary Francois Hollande said it was an "honourable defeat," caused by the logic of Chirac's presidential reelection victory last month and the voters' rejection of cohabitation - or power-sharing.

The Socialists did less badly than they feared and will dominate the opposition with around 155 seats, over around 20 for the Communists and just two for the Greens.

But the left's humiliation was deepened by the defeat of several high-profile former ministers from the last government, including the powerful former employment minister Martine Aubry - architect of the controversial 35-hour week - and maverick former interior minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement.

Communist party president Robert Hue, already smarting after his miserable 3.4 percent in the presidential race, also lost his seat north of Paris and seemed destined to be edged out of power in a future party revamp.

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