France's Hollande fights for his policies as approval rating falls

With record low approval ratings and most of his economic promises in tatters, French President Francois Hollande on Sunday said growth was recovering and unemployment would decrease as government's measures were boring fruit, likely to ease growing public tension.

In a traditional TV interview on France 2 and TF1 channels to mark celebration of the National Day, Hollande stressed that "the economic recovery is here," arguing that a slight pick-up in industry output and consumption showed that the end of the crisis was in the air.

He added having "an already insurance that the second quarter will be better than the first."

The government had previously expected a slight growth of 0.1 percent for the whole year.

But, in the view of the national statistics agency, INSEE, the outlook was gloomier with an expected 0.1-percent growth contraction on stalled consumption and investment, resulting in high unemployment, already at 14-year high.

"I will not list all the steps I have taken. I'm fighting, I am not making another measure. Politics are not magic, but a strategy, a will and consistency,"

Reiterating his commitment to reach healthy finances, Hollande has pledged to "save as much as possible to avoid tax rise" in 2014.

"I will increase taxes only if absolutely necessary, ideally as little as possible. I asked the government to make the more possible savings," the French president said.

Looking to 2014, the Socialists want to cut the public spending by 1.5 billion euro (1.96 billion U.S. dollars) mainly by squeezing expenditure of local authorities and ministries.

As the economy sputters along with an ever increasing jobless rate, Hollande stressed to restore ailing public finances and cut the growing slice of jobseekers in 2013 by improving competitiveness, spuring investment in promising activities of infomation technology and encouraging training of poorly skilled joblesss youth to facilitate their recruitment.

"To have a better growth, we must be confident and not yield to pessimism, We are a strong economic country," the president called on French voters in a move to convince them to keep faith in him to restore the country's economy.

"I'm not trying to be popular. I have a duty that goes beyond. I want to ensure that we can say that I helped to move the country forward," he said.

"My target is not to be re-elected but to make France progressing and make reforms as needed," he added, urging a "united" Social front to face slocial strains and respond to French's expectations of high revenue and more jobs.

According to recent TNS Sofres survey, Hollande's apporval rating was down by two points to 27 percent in June with 70 percent of of respondents said had no faith in the president to fix French economic troubles.