Emmanuel Macron pledged to “re-arm French fertility” and boost falling birth rates on Tuesday as part of a wide array of measures aimed at reviving his faltering second term.

The French president announced a plan to introduce a six-month parental leave plan, one of many policies he said was meant to help France become stronger.

In a marathon press conference – only his third in six years at the Elysée – he also pledged “order”, “authority” and more economic reforms, as well as cutting red tape and better controlling screen times for children.

“France will also be stronger by boosting its birth rate,” Mr Macron insisted. “Until recently, we were a country where this was the strength, not the uniqueness in Europe, when we compared ourselves with our neighbours. This has become less true in recent years.”

‘Demographic rearmament’

France’s birthrate fell by 7 per cent last year to its lowest level since the end of the Second World War, but it still has the highest birthrate in Europe, at 1.53 children per adult.

“Habits are changing, and people are having children later and later,” said the centrist president. “Infertility, both male and female, has risen sharply in recent years and is causing many couples to suffer. A major plan to combat this scourge will be launched to bring about this demographic rearmament.”

Aired on several television channels at prime time, Tuesday’s night’s press conference was expected to set the course for Gabriel Attal, his 34-year-old prime minister, after he was named last week.

The wide-ranging speech also included further promises – from testing uniforms in schools to cracking down on drug trafficking – and came days after the appointment of France’s youngest and first openly-gay prime minister.

Accused by opponents of adopting lofty, monarchical tendencies, Mr Macron almost never holds a full-scale press conference at home but regularly answers questions from reporters while abroad.

“I’m convinced that we have all the assets we need to succeed, and that we will live better tomorrow than we do today,” he said.

Mr Macron started by spelling out measures concerning children including regulating, in a way he did not specify, screen time for children.

He said uniforms would be tested in about one hundred schools, adding that there would be more civic instruction classes and that all children in junior high school should have access to drama classes.

Mr Macron also said he would ask his government to launch a new batch of liberal reforms to boost the economy, saying the country needed to be encouraged to “produce more” and “innovate more”.

“France will be stronger if it wins back its financial independence,” he said.

‘Stricter rules when job offers refused’

Mr Macron announced “act two of the labour market reform” with “tougher rules” for refusing a job offer and “better support” for the unemployed.

“The government will encourage people to create and take up a job with, from next spring, act two of the labour market reform launched in 2017” that made it easier to hire and fire, and was followed by welfare and pension reform last year.

As a result, there will be “stricter rules when job offers are refused and better support for our unemployed through training”, he added.

The aim of these future measures is to “achieve full employment”, a target set for 2027 and corresponding to an unemployment rate of 5 per cent compared with 7.4 per cent at present. After cutting the jobless rate in his first term, unemployment has started to rise again.

Mr Macron has called for the new ministerial team led by Mr Attal to be “revolutionary” and restore a sense of risk-taking dynamism from when he was first elected in 2017. Critics have pointed to a lack of women in mostly unchanged top ministerial posts.

During his seven years in power, Mr Macron has only twice staged major question and answer sessions with media inside the Elysée, preferring instead long interviews with the regional press, and various televised addresses, along with appearances on social media.

His first big press conference was held in April 2019 in the wake of the yellow vest revolt over fuel tax rises.

The last one dates back to December 2021 and was called to launch France’s six-month stint at the helm of the rotating presidency of the EU, which took place just weeks before the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

He spoke to journalists for four hours in 2022, but that was to campaign for re-election.