PARIS — Emmanuel Macron is deploying major tax cuts in his next budget to try to rev up the economy and lift his drooping approval scores — but the headwinds are getting stronger.

The pro-business French president on Monday unveiled tax cuts worth as much as €26 billion for workers and employers, in the most substantial one-time reduction France has seen in more than a decade.

The cuts, which mainly target employers, fit into a strategy of making work pay more in a country where labor costs are high and unemployment — currently stuck above 9 percent — is plaguing the presidency.

But to pay for his cuts, Macron is hitting the less productive sections of society: Pensions are to be capped, as are welfare benefits, and public sector jobs are to be axed, according to a sneak peek of the budget provided Sunday by Prime Minister Edouard Philippe.

“This is going to be a real bloodbath for the state and the public services” — Far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon

The heavy transfers are taking place against a backdrop of slowing economic growth — which puts France back on a collision course with the European Union over its budget deficit, set to rise slightly next year.

"We're taking responsibility for a policy of transformation and control of spending which privileges — I repeat — compensation for work, and breaks with the undifferentiated increase of welfare benefits," Philippe told le Journal du Dimanche.

He added: "But that does not prevent us from sticking to our commitments on reducing taxes while reining in public spending."

Budgetary healing

Macron's year 2 budget is a play to correct the course of a presidency veering into unpopularity.

According to a September 16 poll conducted by Kantar Sofres-onepoint, less than one in five French people now approve of Macron's job performance — a dizzying drop that has accelerated in the past two months.

A series of problems, including weak growth and high unemployment, is plaguing France's golden-boy leader. But none sums up the loss of love like the so-called "Benalla Affair," a complex scandal involving an ex-Macron bodyguard that has morphed into a public trial of a president too often seen as aloof.

Macron came under fire for not dismissing 26-year-old Alexandre Benalla quickly enough after finding out that he had assaulted two activists during a May Day parade while impersonating a police officer.

Instead of limiting the damage, Macron fanned the flames by taunting his critics to "come and get him" over the allegations and lecturing accusers in Parliament over their duty to democracy. None of that went down well, with one poll by Elabe showing that eight out of 10 French people were "shocked" by the alleged cozy ties between the president and his one-time aide.

Macron has since been shaken by the resignation of his ultra-popular Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot and the announcement that his interior minister, Gérard Collomb, would step down.

If at first Collomb's departure, set for 2019, was presented as being unrelated to the Benalla scandal, quotes from the minister published Monday suggested otherwise: "There are not many of us who can still speak to him. Those who can speak frankly to Macron are those who were there from the start ... By the way, he's not going to stand me for much longer," Collomb is quoted by regional daily La Dépêche du Midi as having said during a lunch with journalists.

With problems like these

All of which raises the stakes for Macron's economic agenda, which has yet to yield results. After 16 months of nonstop reform, starting with hiring and firing rules, growth remains weak and unemployment stubbornly high.

Macron has little choice but to press on and hope for results. His 2019 budget, which rewards the professional classes that massively backed him in 2017, shows the president doubling down on supply-side economic policies and limiting handouts.

Labor charges on employers are set to drop by close to €20 billion, while working households will get around €6 billion worth of cuts. A tax on overtime pay is to be axed from September 2019, as is a housing tax. And the government plans to cut 4,500 state jobs next year, followed by another 10,000 in 2020.

Results may yet be a long way out — Macron himself has repeatedly said his reforms would not pay off until two or three years into his term.

But politically speaking, the battle lines are drawn: Macron has thrown his lot in with France's more affluent voters less than a year ahead of the European Parliament election.

"This is going to be a real bloodbath for the state and the public services," far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon said in reaction to the budget announcement.