But there are several hurdles in the way of Macron before he can crank up Europe's Franco-German motor, which has been sputtering badly these past two decades because of France's continued failure to pass serious economic reforms.
The first obstacle is Le Pen herself.
She looks unlikely to win, but her campaign will, as Mujtaba Rahman at the Eurasia Group notes, force Macron to defend immigration, the EU and open borders vigorously.
In the age of Isis and austerity, these are all things the French public has become notably lukewarm about.
In short, if Le Pen runs a strong campaign then Macron may not win as easily as the pollsters expect.
In any event, he will emerge from the process with nothing like the 82 per cent mandate won by Jacques Chirac when he saw off Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie, in the 2002 run-off.
Next, if Macron wants to implement his agenda he will need to win a majority in the French legislative elections in June.
Many political observers believe that is very unlikely to happen.
Macron's En Marche! movement has only existed for a year, and even though he has promised to put up candidates in every seat, his rag-tag mix of political defectors and candidates drawn from civil society will be fighting entrenched incumbents.
Much more likely is a majority for Les Republicains - the centre-right party of Nicolas Sarkozy, which was damaged by the scandal-plagued candidacy of François Fillon but remains a strong force on the ground.
Unless he can fashion an electoral miracle, Macron will end up in the Elysée Palace, but forced into a "cohabitation" with his political rivals, severely limiting his room to deliver the reforms needed to reawaken France.
Macron is often likened (not always kindly) to a "French Tony Blair" but in today's Europe, riven with insecurity caused by stagnation, immigration and terror, his mushy third-way policies cannot gain the broad traction or enthusiasm they did in the heady Blair-Clinton years.
Alas for France, with 25 per cent youth unemployment and a sclerotic, bloated state, Macron will struggle to deliver the structural reforms that will get Germany to sign up to his schemes to reboot the euro.
For those that dream of a rebirth of Europe the risk is that a Macron presidency, weakened from the outset by the lack of a parliamentary majority and the fracturing of French politics, is likely to disappoint when the initial sugar-rush of his election fades.
If Le Pen makes another strong showing in the European elections in 2019 and if she can point to the failure of another establishment internationalist to deliver the change needed for France to live up to its high opinion of itself, she will see that as her chance.
Front National strategists, in private, like to say that 2022 is their real goal when it comes to winning power in France.
Looking at the neophyte figure of Macron, and Europe's intractable political and economic morass, that is an outcome that cannot be discounted.
