(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - French president Nicolas Sarkozy is facing a sharp downward trend, according to a poll by Ifop published in Le Journal du Dimanche. 38 per cent of respondents are satisfied with the president’s performance, down nine points since January.

In May 2007, Sarkozy, a centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) candidate and former interior minister, won the presidential run-off with 53.06 per cent of the vote. Sarkozy appointed François Fillon—who had been his adviser and presidential campaign leader—as prime minister. 57 per cent of respondents have a positive opinion of Fillon’s performance, up seven points in a month.

Last month, Sarkozy unveiled a proposal to revise the school curriculum this year and make all students learn about at least one Jewish kid killed by the Nazis during World War II. The president said that fifth-grade students must begin to get "personally" familiarized with one of the 11,000 French children who died at the hands of the Nazi regime, adding, "Nothing is more moving, for a child, than the story of a child his own age, who has the same games, the same joys and the same hopes as he, but who, in the dawn of the 1940s, had the bad fortune to be defined as a Jew."

Simone Veil—a Holocaust survivor and honorary president of the Foundation for the Memory of the Holocaust in France—decried the president’s idea, saying, "You cannot inflict this on little ones of 10 years old! You cannot ask a child to identify with a dead child. The weight of this memory is much too heavy to bear."

Polling Data

Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with Nicolas Sarkozy’s performance as president?

Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with François Fillon’s performance as prime minister?

Source: Ifop / Le Journal du Dimanche
Methodology: Telephone interviews to 1,879 French adults, conducted from Feb. 14 to Feb. 22, 2008. No margin of error was provided.

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