France's Fillon sticks to reform path despite polls

By Crispian Balmer

PARIS (Reuters) - The French government will press ahead with its reform program and cut state spending, Prime Minister Francois Fillon said on Monday, playing down disastrous opinion polls for his boss, President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Sarkozy won a clear cut election victory one year ago promising to usher in an era of change for France, but he has so far failed to live up to expectations and has the worst approval rating of any French president just 12 months into office.

His government lieutenants have fanned out across the media to mark the anniversary and defend Sarkozy's record, saying they should be judged at the end of their mandate, not before.

"Regrets are for when you draw up the balance sheet and the balance sheet will be prepared at the end of the five-year term," Fillon told France Info radio.

According to one poll released last week, just 32 percent of voters said they were satisfied by Sarkozy against 66 percent who were unhappy about his performance, with the rising cost of living and misgivings over his brash style weighing heavily.

The poor ratings could make it harder for him to push through his reform agenda, weakening his legitimacy in the eyes of voters and encouraging opponents to fight the changes.

However, Fillon said heavily indebted France could not duck controversial reforms, such as getting people to work longer before drawing a pension and cutting back France's army of public sector workers.

"We don't have a choice. We need to cut state spending to rediscover (economic) growth and once again balance public finances," he said.

"If reform is so difficult in our country it's because we have waited so long that today we need to do everything at the same time and when you do everything at once it's normal that this creates friction here and there."

STREET PROTESTS

May looks set to be a particularly tense month for Sarkozy, with high school students planning massive street demonstrations against the proposed reduction in teaching staff and unions calling for protests against the pension shake up.

France has failed to balance its budget for 34 years and the deficit is on the rise again, climbing to 2.7 percent of gross domestic product in 2007 against a target of 2.4 percent. The European Commission forecasts it will hit 3.0 percent this year.

The global financial turmoil has added to the government's problems, shunting French growth to lower-than-expected levels and depriving Sarkozy of any room for maneuver to sweeten the bitter reform medicine.

Fillon said the government had already carried out many of the reforms promised by Sarkozy when he took office, including a move to give France's underperforming universities more autonomy and ending pension privileges for some state workers.

"The one very important satisfaction we have is that we have changed the nature of the debate in our country ... leading France onto the ideological terrain that we wanted," said the conservative prime minister.