French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has been asked to form a new government after the centre-right's landslide victory in Sunday's parliamentary election.

President Jacques Chirac reappointed him after the government coalition parties trounced the left and sent the far-right right back to the political margins.

The French president has promised to deliver large tax cuts, streamline the civil service, reform pensions and combat crime.

The UMP - an alliance of groups backing the recently re-elected president - won an absolute majority, with 354 seats in the 577-seat parliament. Other right-wing parties won 45 seats.

The Socialists and other left-wing parties won just 173, and Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front failed to take a single seat.

The new government is expected to be named on Monday evening and to closely resemble the existing one, but with a few changes and additions of junior ministers.

One minister who will not be reappointed is Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, European affairs minister in the interim cabinet, who resigned on Monday. He is under investigation for his alleged involvement in an illegal party funding scandal.

Raffarin is set to name his government on Tuesday

The first session of the newly elected National Assembly should take place on 25 June, while the prime minister is to deliver a speech outlining the government's main policies in early July.

Sunday's vote brings to an end the five years of uneasy "cohabitation" Mr Chirac has endured with a left-wing prime minister.

The president's allies dominate not only the national assembly, but also hold sway in the Senate, in the regional governments and the constitutional council.

Just under 40% of the electorate did not bother to vote - a record for French parliamentary elections.

Picking up the pieces

The Socialists - who won the last parliamentary elections in 1997 - have held on to about 140 seats.

Chirac now has a huge majority in the assembly

It was not quite the rout they had feared but, as leading members of the party have acknowledged, they now have to decide what they are for.

The election failure of some big name Socialists underlined the extent of the party's defeat.

Among the casualties were Martine Aubry, a former labour minister who brought in a law reducing the working week, maverick former interior minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement, and Gilbert Mitterrand, son of the late president Francois Mitterrand.

Their Communist allies won 21 seats, with the party's leader, Robert Hue, losing his seat in the north of Paris.

So did former environment minister, Dominique Voynet, who was party secretary of the Greens.

Le Pen bitter

National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen said he was not disappointed by the failure of his party to get a single seat, because he had not expected to win any.

Election casualties

Martine Aubry Jean-Pierre Chevenement Robert Hue Dominique Voynet Gilbert Mitterrand

"I will be in good company - along with ordinary French people who have no right to representation in the assembly," he said.

Mr Le Pen has argued that the system works against the National Front.

However, analysts say that after the surprisingly good result Mr Le Pen achieved in the first round of the presidential election, many voters turned away from his anti-immigration message.