French press review 24 July 2017

President Macron suffers a 10-point plunge in his opinion ratings as the  honeymoon ends.

The papers this morning focus on the 10-point crash in President Emmanuel Macron's popularity rating.

According to an IFOP institute poll for the Sunday newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche only 54% of the French people are satisfied with his rule, down from 64% in June, going by the findings of the survey.

According to Le Parisien the survey confirms that Macron is going through his first turbulent moment since his arrival at the Elysée Palace. Prime Minister Edouard Philippe's opinions ratings also recorded a dramatic 8 point drop, falling from 64 to 56% in a single month.

Several publications attribute the dwindling political fortunes of the executive couple to what they describe as the government's entry into mined territory.

One measure is presented by the press as the cause of the Macron's political decline, his plan to slash five euros from beneficiaries of the APL or personalized housing subsidies per home starting in October.

Le Parisien underlines that 6.5 million French households including 800,000 students benefit from the measure which costs the state budget 18 billion euros per year at the moment. Le Parisien says the government hopes to save 32 million euros over the next three months and less than 100 million euros by the end of the year.

According to Libération for Socialists who jumped ship to join Macron's Republicans On the Move party, there are bound to be regrets as they come face to face with the government's so-called anti-social measures.

Le Républicain Lorrain says the tax squeeze unveiled by the government is lacking in sincerity even though the measure appears in the candidate Macron's electoral manifesto.

But as the regional paper observes, going ahead with such a controversial reform on a social subsidy much appreciated by struggling households before the explosive revamping of the labour code is widespread anger.

For le Midi Libre, issues such as CSG or social security deduction, cuts in the military budget and in subsidized housing, sustain the government in what must be its daily toil in the management of country which no longer has the means to continue lavish spending.

According to le Journal de la Haute-Marne, the idea of a state of presidential grace in a society of suffering and impatience has become incongruous.

And for l'Alsace, the writing on the wall carries a clear message-- the honeymoon between Emmanuel Macron and the French people is over.

Some of today's papers look forward to this Monday's closed-door talks of the UN Security Council about the deadly unrest in the Middle East which has resulted in the death of 8 people.

This, after the installation of metal detectors at entrances of the Haram al-Sharif mosque (Temple Mount to Jews) following an attack that killed two policemen. 

Le Parisien says the violence took a turn for the worse after a shooting at Israel's embassy in Jordan in which two Jordanian men were killed and an Israeli seriously injured.

L'Humanité for its part, blames the so-called open crisis, on the "illegal" decision by Israeli authorities to install the metal detectors at the entrance compound.

From the Communist daily's point of view, the right-wing Israeli government acted with such a high-handed manner because it benefits from the criminal silence, guilty complicity and squalid encouragement of the likes of Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron and a circles of European friends.

L'Humanité warns that if the UN Security Council meaning was just a ploy to calm down the justified protest by the people of Palestine, the UN would be held responsible for the non-application of an international law it promulgated.