LONDON — There was palpable relief in mainstream Europe at the success of the independent centrist Emmanuel Macron in the first round of the French presidential elections, and a wide assumption that he will defeat the far-right Marine Le Pen in a runoff two weeks from now.

After other recent electoral setbacks for far-right populists, and the far right’s flagging momentum in Germany’s election campaign, some even suggested that the French election could represent the high-water mark of the populist surge that has voted Britain out of the European Union and Mr Donald Trump into power in the United States.

If this is a high-water mark, though, the water remains quite high.

For the moment, the parties and personalities that have energised far-right populism have not fully crystallised electorally. But the issues that have animated the movements — slow economies, a lack of jobs, immigration — are not going anywhere, and the far right has already moved the political terrain in its direction.

The politics of Europe remain, at best, precarious, even if the centre — the French-German core of the European Union — appears to be holding, at least for now.

“There is a sigh of relief,” said director of the Holbrooke Forum at the American Academy in Berlin, Jan Techau. “It’s good that in addition to all the other issues on the agenda, we don’t also have an extremist French problem.”

After a year of unpredictable elections in Europe and the US, it would be unwise to discount Ms Le Pen entirely, even if her odds are long.

By winning more votes than Ms Le Pen, Mr Macron, who at 39 is on course to be France’s youngest head of state since Napoleon, seemed to many to be a new generation’s centrist answer to sclerotic and corrupt establishment politics, and the challenge of populism and the far right.

Even so, candidates of the far right and far left did very well in the voting, reflecting strong and sceptical views among the French public.

“Of course many people in Brussels and so on are relieved we don’t have two extremists in the last round, but only one,” said Mr Guntram B Wolff, a German who directs Bruegel, a Brussels-based research organisation.

“But the fact of the matter is that we still have a little bit more than 40 per cent of the electorate having voted for an extremist. So that shows that a large part of the French population doesn’t seem to be very happy with his or her own position and pretty dissatisfied with the political system.”

The question for many is whether a centrist reformer such as Mr Macron, a former investment banker, is prepared to seriously take on board the dissatisfaction of ordinary working people.

“That the flow of support towards the far-right populists has stagnated is a hopeful sign for European democracy,” co-leaders of the Greens in the European Parliament Ska Keller and Philippe Lamberts said cautiously in a joint statement.

“But the threat from the far right is not over,” they were quick to add.

“If Macron is to take it on and defeat it, he needs to get real on social justice and do more for those who feel marginalised.”

On traditional measures, Ms Le Pen did very well in the first-round vote on Sunday. She received nearly 7.7 million votes, compared with her 6.4 million in the first round in 2012 and the 4.8 million that her father, Mr Jean-Marie, received when he advanced to the second round in 2002.

An analysis of Sunday’s vote shows Ms Le Pen did well in parts of France with lower incomes, lower life expectancy and lower education levels.

She is expected to lose in the runoff, but Mr Macron, a youthful banker with an elite education, is an easy target for her. French unhappiness with establishment parties is sure to be reflected in the June votes for the French legislature, in which Mr Macron and his year-old movement, En Marche!, will have to work hard to cobble together a working majority.