French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to overhaul his government this week, local media reported on Sunday.
Macron, elected in May 2017, has been beset by high-level resignations -- including, last week, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb -- and dire poll numbers in recent months.
The French president's net approval rating fell into negative territory with most pollsters within months of his election, but in mid-September 2018 plummeted to new lows of below minus-40 percent with five polling companies.
A small rebound at the beginning of October, with disapproval ratings trending down from lows of 70 percent, appears not to have been enough to prevent the president taking action.
Journal du Dimanche reported a major reshuffle would be announced on Tuesday, with the?resignation of Collomb, a senior minister, prompting a rethink.
Collomb, the third minister to step down in two months, resigned to campaign for his former job as mayor of Lyon.?
Macron initially refused to accept the 71-year-old interior minister's departure, prompting Liberation newspaper to describe the back-and-forth as "extraordinary dilly-dallying which seems more like something from a music-hall than government politics."
Energy minister?Nicolas Hulot recently quit during a live radio interview?saying he felt "all alone" in government on green issues, sports minister Laura Flessel also departed, and a?scandal erupted over Macron security officer Alexandre Benalla.
Bloomberg on Monday described Macron's reshuffle plan as "phase two of his presidency," noting that the 40-year-old had always planned to govern in two stages.
The initial phase was the "transformation" plan -- a series of wide-ranging reforms, which are ongoing -- and the second building on the changes in the run-up to the 2022 presidential election.??
Tuesday's expected overhaul will mean an acceleration of phase two even as phase one continues, Bloomberg added, noting that reforms of unemployment benefits and pensions are still to be completed.
So far Macron has?delivered on some of his promised domestic policies and made a splash overseas, though critics point to little headway in improving headline unemployment or economic figures and limited progress in his efforts to reform the European Union.
The government forecasts GDP growth of 1.6 percent this year, down from 2.3 percent recorded in 2017. Its target of seven percent unemployment by 2022 remains "perfectly achievable," Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said in September, but the jobless rate currently stands above nine percent.
Macron has also sparked criticism with recent comments, earning a rebuke from far-right politician Marine Le Pen, a likely challenger again in 2022, after he urged his compatriots to moan less.
In September he was criticized for telling an unemployed gardener to "cross the street" to find work, and in August he came under fire after he described the French as "Gauls who are resistant to change" during a trip to Denmark.
Macron received 66.1 percent of the vote in May 2017, but his support came from a broad coalition of voters opposed to Le Pen as well as those excited by his centrist movement En Marche.
