PARIS: French Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced Monday he was canceling a trip to Germany in the wake of his party’s drubbing in local polls.

The Socialists suffered a major defeat in Sunday elections, losing around half the local councils they controlled.

Valls was due to take part in an annual meeting of French and German ministers in Berlin on Tuesday, before heading to Frankfurt to meet officials at the European Central Bank.

But his office said he “has decided he should be present” for a meeting of Socialist MPs in Paris and question time in parliament.

The statement said Valls had made the decision in consultation with President Francois Hollande.

Valls has acknowledged the election results were a setback but vowed to continue with his program of reforms to pep up France’s struggling economy.

There will be “new measures to boost private and public investment,” said Valls in the immediate aftermath of the defeat.

Far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen couldn’t hide her disappointment Monday not to have won one single local council in France’s election, but insisted she was satisfied with her party’s performance.

Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative UMP party and its allies won 46 percent of Sunday’s vote, taking control of 66 of the 98 local councils, mostly at the expense of the left, which lost 25 of them, according to the Interior Ministry. The left captured 32 percent of the vote and the National Front won 22 percent, the agency said. Turnout was 49.98 percent.

In an interview Monday with radio RTL, Le Pen reminded her audience that that her party won just a single seat in 2011, and 62 of the 4,108 available on Sunday.

“I obviously express my satisfaction. We have multiplied by 62 our number of elected councilors,” she said.