Emmanuel Macron isn’t going to Warsaw or meeting with Polish officials during this week’s trip to Central Europe, but Poland is a key part of why the French president is on the road.

As an increasingly unpopular Macron prepares to launch his domestic economic reforms after the summer holidays, making it easier to hire and fire, unions are already planning protests. To discourage French workers from taking to the streets, Macron needs to show he’s taking steps to defend them: That's why he's looking for allies in his effort to revamp the EU's Posted Workers Directive — which governs the conditions under which people from one country can work in another.

France has long tried to stem the number of foreign workers able to work in Western Europe for lower salaries while paying taxes in their home countries, calling it “social dumping.” Depicting the current system as a "betrayal" of EU values, Macron wants posted workers’ contracts limited to one year instead of two, and for similar jobs to get similar pay, something that would undermine the competitive advantage for employers who currently avoid paying high social charges in France.

"The single European market and the free movement of workers is not meant to create a race to the bottom in terms of social regulations," Macron said in Austria on Wednesday. "It is exactly this that is fueling populism and eroding confidence in the European project."

That’s where Poland comes in.

Macron has long seen Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice party government as a key foe in his program of rebuilding the EU.

Out of 1.9 million such workers, about 420,000 are Poles, the highest number from any EU country, according to the European Commission. They largely work in building trades and seek employment in wealthy countries such as France, Austria and Germany. Even though such workers account for less than 1 percent of the EU's workforce, they have become a target in many countries worried about low-wage competition from Central Europe.

Although Poland agrees with efforts to tighten up abuses, it balks at radical changes to the directive that could affect so many of its people. But Warsaw's growing problems with Brussels and tense relations with Paris make it an easy target for Macron.

In Austria, Macron met with the prime ministers of Slovakia and the Czech Republic, seeking to undermine the common position on posted workers of the Visegrad Group, a bloc that also includes Poland and Hungary. He made progress, winning cautious backing for his reform plans from the Slovaks and the Czechs.

In return, Macron acknowledged both countries’ distaste for the EU program of allocating asylum seekers among member countries.

“It’s not up to me to say how many migrants should be sent to Slovakia,” he said.

He made no such effort to win over Poland and Hungary.

Taking aim at Poland

Macron has long seen Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice party government as a key foe in his program of rebuilding the EU. During his election campaign, he urged the EU to impose sanctions on Poland if it continues to breach the bloc’s democratic norms, and railed at a country he said "violates" the EU's principles. He also made an appearance at a French Whirlpool factory that plans to move to Poland.

On Friday while in Bulgaria, Macron again laid into Poland, saying the Polish people “deserve better” than the current government. He also made clear that Warsaw won't be able to block reforms to the Posted Workers Directive

“In no way will the decision by a country that has decided to isolate itself in the workings of Europe jeopardize the finding of an ambitious compromise,” he said.

Ties between Warsaw and Paris soured after the Polish government last year unexpectedly dropped a €3.2 billion contract to equip its military with multipurpose helicopters from Airbus. There have been a host of small annoyances since, with a Polish deputy defense minister saying that the French had learned to eat with forks thanks to Poles. A planned effort to limit Sunday shopping will deal a blow to big French retail chains that are a dominant presence in Poland.

It's part of a broader Polish retreat from the European mainstream. Poland's closest ally, the U.K., is leaving the EU, and ties with Germany are frayed thanks to the Polish government's effort to seek reparations for wartime atrocities.

Regular meetings among the leaders of Poland, France and Germany — the so-called Weimar Triangle — are sputtering. No summit has been planned for this year, and a French official said that scheduling another would be contingent on "context" — in other words the state of relations between Warsaw and the other two countries.

With few friends left, Warsaw is having difficulty blocking Macron’s moves.

“You’re either sitting at the table or you’re on the menu. We’re on the menu,” said Marcin Zaborowski, a senior associate with Visegrad Insight, a foreign policy magazine. "Macron is cleverly playing off Central Europe to change the Posted Workers Directive. That helps him a lot at home.”

The Polish government insists nothing is wrong.

“Visegrad is very united and has a common position [on the directive],” Konrad Szymański, the deputy foreign minister in charge of European affairs, told the Polish Press Agency.

But his boss, Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski, couldn’t resist a poke at the French, telling the Catholic Radio Maryja station on Thursday that Macron is trying to patch up deep weaknesses at home.

“The French economy isn’t able to compete with the powerful economies of many European countries, including Poland,” he said, adding that instead of trying to make his own country more competitive, Macron “thought up a way to limit our ability to function in the common European market.”

It’s not clear whether Macron’s efforts to revamp the directive will work. Labor ministers will discuss the directive in late October, and there are still deep differences among member countries and within the European Parliament.

"Poland is not lost. It's a great European country with which we have serious divergences" — French MP Pieyre-Alexandre Anglade

But the sight of the French president touring Central Europe to do battle for French workers could help Macron, who is explicit about the link between revising the directive and delivering on his campaign promise of better "protection" for French workers.

Although France has turned a cold shoulder to Warsaw over concerns about rule of law, and Macron showed no interest in including Poland in this week’s regional tour, MP Pieyre-Alexandre Anglade, vice president of the French parliament's European affairs commission, said that behind the scenes, Macron has close relations with President Andrzej Duda, with whom he has spoken three times since taking office.

"Poland is not lost. It's a great European country with which we have serious divergences,” he told POLITICO. “If Macron is not going, it's mostly because he wants to see what can be done with countries that are willing to move forward. But his dialogue with Duda is very straightforward, notably on rule of law."

Nicholas Vinocur contributed reporting from Paris.

This article has been updated with Macron's comments Friday in Bulgaria.