Paris: France plans to change the constitution to allow it to extend a state of emergency ‘to a maximum of six months’, government sources said on Thursday.

They said the legal framework to extend special powers beyond the current three-month limit, set out by President Francois Hollande after last month’s attacks on Paris, will be presented to ministers on 23 December.

French President Francois Hollande’s popularity has risen to its highest level in three years with voters backing his robust handling of the 13 November militant attacks that killed 130 people in Paris, two polls showed on Tuesday.

Trust in Hollande jumped from 15 per cent in November to 35 percent in December, back to a level last seen in December 2012, the TNS-Sofres One Point poll for Le Figaro daily showed.

Approval of Hollande’s action as president soared from 28 per cent in November to 50 per cent in December, an IFOP-Fiducial poll for Paris Match showed.

Hollande, a Socialist elected in May 2012, has for most of his mandate drawn the lowest ratings ever for a French president. Now he is now doing better than conservative predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy did at the same stage of his tenure.

However, a smaller jump in his approval ratings after militant attacks in January was short-lived, suggesting support could fade again in the longer run toward his expected re-election bid in 2017.

France’s unemployment rate is now above the euro zone average for the first time since 2007, according to Eurostat data, a figure likely to hurt Hollande’s ratings.

Sixty-three percent of those surveyed for the December poll still said they did not trust him.

Hollande’s Socialist Party, which now rules most regional jurisdictions as well as the country as a whole, is seen suffering huge losses in regional elections on 6 December and 13, even if the defeat could be somewhat smaller than it may have feared a few weeks ago.

The TNS Sofres survey was based on the views of 1,000 people polled at home between 26 November and 28 November.

The IFOP-Fiducial survey was based on the views of 983 people polled by phone on 27-28 November.