French ‘falling out of love’ with Macron after 100 days

PARIS: Emmanuel Macron, the 39-year-old former investment banker who was catapulted to the French presidency in May, faces widespread disillusionment as he prepares to mark his first 100 days in office.

The man shown walking on water on the cover of The Economist magazine after his startling rise has seen his approval ratings nosedive, with only 36 percent of respondents giving him the thumbs up in one recent poll.

The French are "falling out of love" with Macron, the right-leaning daily Le Figaro headlined on Sunday. No French president has seen such a steep drop in popularity so early in his rule since Jacques Chirac in 1995.

Macron, who shot to power on May 7 promising to overcome France’s entrenched right-left divide, has since come under fire for his labour reform programme, budget and public spending cuts as well as a plan to create an official First Lady position for his 64-year-old wife Brigitte.

France’s youngest ever president is especially out of favour with civil servants after vowing to put a brake on their salary increases. Macron "must come down to earth and assume the political cost of his decisions," leading pollster Jerome Fourquet told AFP.

Proposed defence cuts -- part of a plan to trim 4.5 billion euros to bring France’s budget deficit within EU limits -- led to a public row last month with the head of the French armed forces, General Pierre de Villiers.

Macron rebuked him for questioning the wisdom of cuts at a time the army was in action in the Middle East and west Africa as well as at home. De Villiers resigned a few days later. "The honeymoon is over between Emmanuel Macron and the French," wrote editorialist Laurent Bodin in the wake of the spat.

The stars aligned for Macron to sweep to power on a promise of change less than a year after he quit the deeply unpopular Socialist government of Francois Hollande, dogged by a sluggish economy and stubborn unemployment.