BERLIN – Economically, France is doing better than it has in a long time. Growth is up, unemployment is down and business activity remains high.

But the fierce protests over reforms of the retirement system are continuing and looks likely to continue into the new year, leaving observers baffled and trying to make sense of the apparent contradiction.

At the centre of debate is the head of state, President Emmanuel Macron.

In fact, favourable economic statistics seem not to be helping him. The 41-year-old boyish-looking president first had to cope with the “gilets jaunes”, the so-called yellow vest movement, that started more than a year ago and turned parts of Paris almost into battle zones.

Now, for many weeks, the French president is again facing resistance on the streets against his plans to reform the fragmented French retirement scheme.

Mr Macron is only doing what he said he would do when he ran for office in 2017.

Since entering the Elysée Palace, Mr Macron has made the job market more flexible, readjusted the rights of the unemployed and stepped up training to help people return to work.

The embattled pension reform is a key element of his overhaul plan.

The president wants to do away with a confusing system of 42 pension schemes for individual groups. Against the backdrop of an ageing society, he also intends to raise the statutory retirement age from 62 to 64. The French pension system is one of the most costly in the world, consuming around 14 per cent of the nation’s GDP.

The current situation is reminding many of the winter of 1995 when conservative prime minister Alain Juppé tried to streamline the pension system – and failed. One million Frenchmen took to the streets, forcing Mr Juppé to drop his plans.

Mr Macron, who swept away the established political parties when he entered the political stage a few years ago, believes fervently that much more is at stake now and that is nothing less than the future sustainability of France.

The French leader is often compared to Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister who unravelled a rigid political system in her country in the 1980s by taking on the trade unions.

His critics, however, do not see the president as the lone fighter against a frozen system. They accuse him of representing an elite far detached from ordinary people. The many critics range from the demographer Herve Le Bras to filmmaker Francois Ruffin and respected economist Thomas Piketty.

In his book, “Feeling Bad In A France That’s Doing Well”, historian Herve Le Bras, from the School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, said that he believed the current uproar showed a dislike for the president’s personality and style of governing, which has been described as arrogant and too distant.

In even stronger terms denouncing Mr Macron, the far-left legislator and film artist Francois Ruffin published a manifesto titled “This Country That You Don’t Know” in which he said: “You are the product of social segregation, outside of the people, far from the people, and now against the people.”

Thomas Piketty, author of the highly praised book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” has also criticised the pension reform plan as “a fraud”.

“Those who have less will end up paying the highest contributions,” said the economist recently.

On the international stage, Mr Macron has snubbed colleagues by rushing ahead with his own ideas. This was the case recently when he favoured German Ursula von der Leyen as new head of the European Commission, brusquely sidelining the EU parliament.

Similarly he rather rudely set the tone before the recent Nato summit in Watford, in Britain, claiming that Nato is “brain dead”.

But, in the long term, the choice of Ms von der Leyen could turn out as an excellent move. Putting a highly seasoned and resolute voice at the helm of the EU in a period of rising populism and right-wing nationalism could prove to be much better than opting for a compromise candidate from the EU parliament to head the Commission.

And US President Donald Trump, so far not exactly a friend of Nato, felt obliged to publicly defend the Western military alliance after Mr Macron’s outburst.

Experts already see a pattern in Mr Macron’s handling of seemingly gridlocked situations.

Ms Tara Varma, head of the office of the European Council Of Foreign Relations in Paris, says: “This is the Macron method. It is the usual en même temps: radical in methodology and directly opposed to the consensus-building that Europeans and the multilateral system are used to.

“It is the political line that he has followed since coming to power in 2017.”

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