French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced a minor cabinet reshuffle yesterday but vowed to pursue reform plans after his centre-right UMP party suffered big losses in local elections at the weekend.
"What is sure is that I will need to take a certain number of initiatives to continue the changes that are needed for our country," he said at the sidelines of a commemoration for France's World War II resistance movement.
"I was elected to conduct these policies and that's what I am going to do," he said. The comments, shortly before the appointment of six new junior ministers including new secretaries of state for foreign trade and employment, repeated the government line that there would be no change of course after the election.
An opinion poll by the BVA polling institute showed 63 per cent of those questioned judged the government's economic policies bad or very bad, against 58 per cent a month ago.
The poll also found that 51 per cent thought he should adapt his policies to reflect the concerns of voters over social issues and the need to protect services, against 40 per cent who wanted faster reforms of pensions and public finances. Mr Sarkozy, whose own personal unpopularity played a big role in the campaign, has made little direct comment on the election, that left the opposition Socialists in charge of seven of France's top 10 cities including the capital Paris as well as most of its administrative regions.
Ten months after his election in May 2007, his image has been dented by crumbling public confidence in the economy and irritation at a sometimes impetuous and brusque manner that many voters feel is unbecoming of a president.
Mr Sarkozy's public agenda this week has been filled mainly with events in keeping with the traditional role of the president, beginning with a commemoration on Monday for the last French veteran of World War I.
Yesterday, he continued with a visit to the Glieres plateau in the mountainous Haute Savoie region of eastern France, scene of one of the biggest battles between wartime resistance forces and the occupying Germans.