French press review 25 July 2017

Lessons from President Macron's 10-point crash in the opinion polls as France prepares a national tribute for ISIL-slainFather Hamel one year ago in the north of France.

President Emmanuel Macron's tumbling popularity after only three months continues to inspire reactions in the papers three days after an IFOP poll documented a 10-point plunge in his performance rating.

Macron slumped to 54 percent, down from 64 percent in June, according to a survey published on Sunday.

L'Humanité joins the other newspapers which rushed to criticize Macron's heavy-handed ways after a row over budget cuts that ended with the resignation of a highly-regarded military chief.

According to the newspaper, Macron’s disaffection is two percentage points below his predecessor François Hollande’s ratings three month after his election

The paper blames the fallout on Macron’s so-called “XXL" labour laws, the 5-euro deduction in social security allowances, cuts in the housing subsidies and the lowering of taxes for the wealthy.

This, it claims, is coupled with the multiplication of so-called liberal measures, Macron is forcing down the throats of the French people.

Libération argues that cuts in housing subsidies and the halving of the wealth tax shows that Macron doesn’t understand the mathematics – notably that there are more poor people paying taxes in France than the wealthy.

For Les Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace, taxing the poor will never be a policy especially as the measure is not accompanied by an ambitious plan to construct affordable homes for students and other struggling families.

And for Ouest-France, Macron’s crash in the opinion polls coupled with his Prime Minister there was bound to be a return to be a landing a return to the ground after the elections.

But as it points out, the crash in the opinion ratings of Emmanuel Macron, coupled with the 8 point decline in Prime Minister Édouard Philippe’s standings, underscores the difficulty they encounter in bringing a sense of purpose to their decisions and cohesion to immediate and long term policies.

"In the name of father Jacques Hamel". That's the caption of Le Parisien’s front-page spread. The paper looks forward to Wednesday's national tribute to the 85 year-old Catholic priest whose throat was slit by two ISIL knifemen on the 26th of July last year while he celebrated mass in his parish at Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray.

President Macron is due to attend to a special memorial service to the clergyman whose assassination caused an outpouring of emotions throughout France, according to Le Figaro.

The right-wing publication says that while it is up to the church to cater for the metaphysical welfare of priests, it is the responsibility of politicians to respond to their security concerns.

And the sports daily l'Equipe holds its breathe as the Neymar transfer drama drags on.

The paper reports that the shadow of the Brazilian football stars hangs over Paris Saint Germain's pre-season tour of the United States as the club's officials struggle to lure him over to Paris with a world record contract, worth 222 million euros.

L'Est républicain says that PSG in hunt for their very first European silverware badly need Neymar's “glamorous tough, exceptional talent” as well as his 60 million followers on social media, after the departures of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and David Beckham.