President Francois Hollande at Elysee Palace on December 6, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Antoine Antoniol/Getty Images)
As if President François Hollande’s first year in office wasn’t rocky enough, a tabloid magazine published explosive allegations Friday of the French leader’s tryst with well-known actress Julie Gayet. Unexpectedly, and bolstered perhaps by the Elysee’s recent legal victory over controversial comic M’Bala M’Bala Dieudonné, Hollande has responded with guns blazing.
In a move decidedly different from, say, that expected of an American politician, Hollande hasn’t denied the rumors. Instead, he is chastising the French tabloid Closer — the same magazine that printed topless photos of the Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton in 2012 — for violating his privacy, and is threatening legal action. Across France, popular reaction, while rife with juicy speculation on whom the president is indeed bedding, looks to have less to do with Hollande’s supposed indiscretions (remember Hollande is not married, though he has a longtime partner in Valerie Trierweiler) than with privacy concerns. It’s worth noting that France has strict privacy laws, and that the domestic lives of leading politicians and celebrities are viewed quite differently than they are in the anything-goes environment that dominates Anglophone media.
So how could the breach of the president’s privacy actually help him? His spirited counteroffensive has to be reassuring to voters worried after a year of troubling placidity, during which he struggled to contain infighting within his Socialist party and, on the regional level, counteract Berlin’s influence in the E.U., that the president lacks backbone.
Check out our Blouin Beat primer on Hollande’s weak hand and the French malaise
The scandal could even gain him some much-needed sympathy from his constituents, many of whom, while frustrated with the status quo, may view intrusions into their leader’s personal life (via incognito tabloid photographers) as one step too far. After all, even Hollande’s most spirited opponent has come to his defense. Leader of the far-right Front National (FN) party, Marine Le Pen said that, “As long as it doesn’t cost the taxpayer a penny . . . I believe everyone has the right to have their private life respected.”
Granted, the weary French, even if they are relatively blasé about presidential infidelities, aren’t likely to grant Hollande much leeway — not with the country’s economy still lagging. In fact, Le Pen herself may recoup the greatest political benefit here — i.e., by showing voters that despite her oft-voiced contempt of Hollande’s governance, she is above cheap shots. A smart strategy made all the more necessary given the far right leader’s recent gaffe about French hostages being possible Islamists. Touché.
