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PARIS (Reuters) - French President elect Emmanuel Macron on Thursday fulfilled his promise to draw half of the candidates for his Republic on the Move party for June legislative elections from civil society .

The party, which had never fought an election until it propelled Macron to the presidency on May 7, also kept a pledge to have a balance of male and female candidates in an announcement by party secretary general Richard Ferrand at a news conference.

It named 214 of each sex in a preliminary list of 428 candidates.

Ferrand, who said the rest of the candidates it would put up in France’s 577 constituencies were still a matter for discussion, added that the party was determined to achieve a working majority in parliament.

“We want to build a majority for change and therefore obtain for La Republique en Marche an absolute majority in the national assembly.”

(This version of the story adds dropped word constituencies in paragraph four.)