Playing to his audience, Macron told Merkel that he understands his primary task is to fix France by implementing economic reform | Sean Gallup/Getty Images Macron goes right out of the gates — and then to Berlin New French president makes big political play with his PM choice and courts Angela Merkel.

PARIS — On his first full day in office, French President Emmanuel Macron moved fast to shore up his political position at home and then jetted off to court his most important potential ally abroad.

On both scores, the beginnings looked promising for the new 39-year-old leader in Paris — and the road ahead difficult, long and uncertain.

In his most important personnel decision to date, Macron on Monday reached across the political aisle to pick his prime minister, Edouard Philippe, a conservative lawmaker from the Républicains party.

By tacking to the right, the self-described centrist president who came of age in the Socialist ranks made an explicit bid to peel off a wing of the Républicains to build a new ruling coalition in June's parliamentary elections.

Philippe, 46, is an ally and former aide of Alain Juppé, the former French PM and current Bordeaux mayor who ran unsuccessfully for the Républicains' presidential nomination last year. The mayor of Le Havre, a coastal town in Normandy, will now form a cabinet, to be announced Tuesday, and lead the Macron offensive to take control of parliament next month.

With this choice of a long-standing ally of Juppé, Macron sought to reaffirm his pledge to govern outside the traditional French left-right divide, which he thinks will help him secure an absolute majority in the National Assembly.

Chez Merkel

By the afternoon, Macron was in Berlin, receiving a warm welcome from Chancellor Angela Merkel. He is the fourth French president the German leader will have worked with. None of the first three, from her perspective, proved a comfortable fit. The disparity in economic vitality and political capital between Berlin and Paris yawned ever wider over the 12 years of Merkel's reign.

Playing to his audience, Macron told Merkel that he understands his primary task is to fix France by implementing economic reform. Only an economically stronger France, in the German view, can be a close to equal partner for Berlin.

"The French agenda will be a reform agenda," Macron said at a joint press conference, on his first visit abroad that came barely 24 hours after his inauguration. Macron said France was "the only country that has been unable to tackle mass unemployment in the last 20 years," and promised to fix it. He talked about fiscal and economic cooperation, external defense, joint asylum proposals and foreign policy as possible areas of cooperation between France and Germany.

But he steered clear of what he knows is a sensitive topic — any talk of eurozone reform that sounded to German ears like fiscal transfers to less flush EU countries (i.e. France) to be funded by their taxpayers.

"We don't agree on every single thing," Merkel said in her turn. "There are discussions that need to happen. They didn't stop, but they started today."

In his presidential campaign, Macron signaled his intention to revive the old Franco-German motor that used to drive the EU as a centerpiece of his foreign policy. He may eventually ask for more explicit help from Berlin to back his proposals for an overhaul of EU economic governance.

Républicains divided

For now Macron's immediate concerns lie closer to home and the next election test for his inchoate political movement — the parliamentary poll.

Although it had been widely expected, the immediate consequence of Philippe’s appointment as PM will be to throw the Républicains into turmoil. Even before Philippe was appointed, Macron had been criticized by Républicains officials for trying to “poach” people from the party.

Juppé allies, who voiced their unease at the party’s right-wing shift during the presidential campaign of François Fillon, have been contemplating joining Macron without waiting for the parliamentary ballot next month.

Many of them were waiting for Macron to appoint a prime minister from their camp, to verify that he had kept his word to govern “neither left nor right.”

The new president’s party, La République en Marche, last week refrained from putting forward candidates in electoral districts where Juppé allies are running, to give them time for “reflecting,” party general secretary Richard Ferrand said.

Gilles Boyer, a close Philippe friend who managed Juppé’s primary campaign last year, immediately tweeted after the appointment that “as a man and a citizen, [he was] happy to see him lead France’s government."

Boyer, who co-wrote two political detective novels with Philippe, is running to be an MP with the Républicains' endorsement.

The new French PM will now have the task of leading the candidates of both La République en Marche and its allies — left or right — into the parliamentary elections. This will put him in the awkward position of having to campaign in most districts against former political friends.

It could also prefigure a split among the Républicains which some say is long overdue.

“The only question for us has been to know whether to join Macron before the parliamentary elections or after,” a top Juppé ally said.

“We have nothing in common with the Républicains’ shift towards the hard right, and it has become clear to all that in terms of platform, we are closer to Macron than to those guys,” he added.

Springsteen in Le Havre

Philippe’s appointment was announced much later than had been originally scheduled by the Elysée palace, prompting speculation that the new PM may have found it hard to convince some of his former friends to join him in supporting Macron. Philippe’s support only matters to Macron if he can tempt away a significant number of Républicains lawmakers.

The composition of the whole cabinet will be announced on Tuesday. According to Macron’s long-stated promise, it should include 15 ministers, with men and women in roughly equal numbers.

A member of the Socialist Party during his student days, Philippe graduated from the same elite school for civil servants as Macron, but soon went into active politics for the conservative party.

Known for his at-times abrasive personality, the Bruce Springsteen-loving, boxing aficionado Philippe was first elected to parliament in 2012, but isn’t running for reelection this year.

A law limiting the number of elected mandates an individual can hold is coming into force in July, and Philippe has said several times that he preferred to remain the mayor of Le Havre.