Far right 'at gates of power'

Prime Minister Manuel Valls used a speech at a meeting of European Socialists and Social Democrats in Bologna on Sunday to warn that members of his governing party in particular must unite for a common cause or face losing their grip on power.

"We have to act differently. We have to speak differently," Valls (pictured above, right) said, while standing on the stage alongside Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi (above left).

"We know what will be the terrible price of failure. In France, the extreme right of Marine Le Pen is at the gates of power," he warned, referring to the leader of the National Front.

"And I, as a man of the left, will never be able to resign myself to that because it will be the weakest who will be the first to suffer. And it will also be a terrible, perhaps fatal, blow to Europe."

Valls' words came at the end of a difficult week for President Francois Hollande and his Socialist government.

Record-low popularity

An IFOP opinion poll published on Friday found that if Hollande faced Le Pen in a run-off presidential vote now, Le Pen would win.

A separate poll conducted by IFOP for the Sunday paper Le Journal Du Dimanche found that 85 percent of those questioned did not want Hollande to even run again.

Yet another poll, conducted by TNS-Sofres showed that Hollande had an approval rating of just 13 percent - the lowest for a serving French head of state since World War II.

An ongoing crisis within Hollande's Socialists led the president to instruct Valls to form a new cabinet late last month, in which he turfed out ministers who had openly criticized the government's austerity measures aimed at reducing the country's massive deficit.

Hollande took a further blow on Thursday, when he felt forced to accept the resignation of Thomas Thevenoud, a junior minister for trade appointed just 10 days ago.

This came after Thevenoud admitted having neglected to file a tax return for several years, although he said he had since resolved his issues with the tax authorities.

The president also suffered the embarrassment of caused by a book written by his former live-in partner, Valerie Trierweiler, in which she said he secretly despised the poor, whom he referred to in private as "the toothless."

pfd/msh (Reuters, AFP)