PARIS  (AFP) – President Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday conceded defeat to his Socialist rival Francois Hollande and said he had phoned him to wish him luck as the new leader of France.

“The French people have made their choice… Francois Hollande is the president of France and he must be respected,” he said in a speech to supporters, adding that he had wished his successor well.

Nicolas Sarkozy said he would not lead his right-wing UMP party into June’s parliamentary polls, as his campaign spokeswoman conceded defeat in the presidential vote.

“Stay together. We must win the battle of the legislatives. I will not lead that campaign,” Sarkozy told senior party figures as he read them a draft of his concession speech, according to political sources at the meeting.

“I ran a campaign that addressed the French people, not the French on the left or the French on the right,” he reportedly said.

Sarkozy’s spokeswoman Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet meanwhile conceded that “we have lost this election” and party leader Jean-Francois Cope called for supporters to mobilise in time for the parliamentary vote.

Hollande was elected France’s first Socialist president in nearly two decades on Sunday, dealing a humiliating defeat to Sarkozy and shaking up European politics.

The result will have major implications for Europe as it struggles to emerge from a financial crisis and for France, the eurozone’s second-largest economy and a nuclear-armed permanent member of the UN Security Council.