Europe

Depends how much propaganda they've ingested.

From my own research, there's two things that people are holding against him:

One is his refusal to sign the authorization for the building of a children's oncology hospital (his explanation was that they want to build it in the center where there's barely any parking and it's overcrowded as it is, and he finds the location illegal for approval, he'd have no problem with a different location), after some increased pressure, he finally signed.

The second being the issue of (hot) running water in Bucharest. An acquaintance has actually spoken to an employee of the hot water supplier and apparently the 60 or whatever year old plumbing that was being used was in horrible shape and it really needed changing. To me that seems more of a problem that has been ignored by previous administrations and should never had been allowed to reach that point. Imo, it's actually a point in his favour that he had the balls to cause so much trouble for the people in order to solve the issue.

Beyond that, he's praised for fighting corruption and stopping illegal constructions that had ties to some mafia and whatnot.

And lastly, a few years ago, we had a referendum to amend the constitution to change wording from "between spouses" to "between man and woman". Same sex marriage isn't legal in Romania, but this was an attempt to make it harder for the law to change in the future. His party wanted to vote on which stance to take or something like that. And apparently he had promised when he was elected to remain neutral arguing that it wasn't an issue that needed debating and that remaining neutral would avoid division. He said he won't renew his party membership if his party takes a stance and since they did he's since been independent. And whenever he was asked about his vote he said he voted but not which way. My guess is that he's pro same sex marriage but knows that admitting it would cost him a lot of votes since Romania is still very conservative, as proven by the millions that voted for Georgescu last year and Simion this year.

@Bienenvolk there's quite a strong propaganda, coming from the traditional parties (PSD - Social Democrats and PNL - National Liberals) claiming, but later taken by the extremist parties, demonizing him because he said he doesn't say I love you to his children (or something like that), because he's not married to his partner despite having children and living with her for so long, the fact that he's still living in a rented house at his age etc.

Most notably, he is a friend of a man called Matei Păun, who had business with Russia and Belarus and held some questionable views a while ago, but he emphasized repeatedly that he doesn't share his views. And George Simion is a persona non-grata in both Ukraine and Moldova, and pushed a lot of anti-Ukraine and anti-Moldovan narratives, so this fact was irrelevant as well.

He pretty much has the appearance of a modest man, just a regular guy doing every day stuff, driving a 20-year-old Renault Clio and living with his family, taking care of his children, something along the lines.

I'm personally following him since a while, and what I noticed was that in the previous campaign for the city hall of Bucharest, even when his opponents attacked him, they did it in a somewhat respectful way (don't know how to explain it). So he does seem like a man who gets respect and decency without explicitly asking for it.

Imo I think we'll have some interesting 5 years ahead.

Afaik, Macron is relatively highly regarded in Europe

Is he ? I might be biased by french media, but I don't feel like he is highly regarded by foreign politicians. Liberal media like him because he is one of the last few good looking and good sounding proponents of their ideas.

Macron is highly regarded in Europe? That clown, really? (I'm not French)