Business leaders have hailed promises by French President Francois Hollande to cut taxes and spending, but the left accused him of lurching to the right.
Hollande stonewalled on questions about his personal life at a high-profile press conference on Tuesday, batting aside queries about revelations of an alleged affair with actress Julie Gayet.
He focused instead on reviving France's beleaguered economy, laying out a "social democratic" vision at odds with election promises to boost spending and crack down on the rich.
Insisting that a return to economic growth was essential to France "retaining its influence", Hollande announced plans for 50 billion euros ($A76.8 billion) in spending cuts between 2015-2017 and a 30-billion-euro reduction in corporate payroll charges.
"It was a move in the right direction. There is a growing awareness of the reality in France," the head of the MEDEF employers' union, Pierre Gattaz, told journalists.
In Germany, where there has been concern for some time about the pace of reforms in the lagging French economy, a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives on welcomed Hollande's announcement.
The measures amounted to "a clear paradigm change and it will now depend how that is implemented", Andreas Schockenhoff, the conservatives' deputy parliamentary group leader, said on RBB public radio on Wednesday.
Hollande, whose popularity has plummeted to record lows, is under intense pressure to revitalise the French economy and reduce near record unemployment.
Citing Nordic countries as a model, he said his plans would allow France to boost growth while maintaining its much-cherished welfare state.
But far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon slammed Hollande's plans as "the most violent shift to the right" in decades.
"It's an enormous deception, we have never seen anything like it," Melenchon told RTL radio. "Hollande has adopted all the vocabulary of the right, the entire neo-liberal point of view."
In a rare show of positive coverage for Hollande, French newspapers were brimming with praise after his press conference.
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