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French President Brushes Aside Questions Over Secret Affair French Leader Brushes Aside Questions Over Affair
(about 9 hours later)
PARIS — President François Hollande of France, facing one of the most delicate balancing acts of his political career, politely but firmly brushed aside questions about his personal life on Tuesday at a news conference, saying it was not the proper time or place to address reports of an affair with a film actress that surfaced last week. PARIS — It was arguably the most important speech of François Hollande’s presidency. His job approval remains at nearly the lowest level of any president in French history. His economic policies have failed to make major inroads in addressing chronic unemployment and persistent deficits. His Socialist Party is restive.
After devoting the first 20 minutes of an annual presidential news conference, packed with 500 journalists, largely to his plan for reviving the anemic French economy and France’s rightful place in the world, the first question, asked by Alain Barluet, the head of the Presidential Press Association, was whether Valérie Trierweiler, his companion, was still the first lady. She has been hospitalized since Friday after a glossy tabloid magazine, Closer, published an article and photographs about Mr. Hollande’s liaison with the actress, Julie Gayet. Then there was that other matter weighing on him, with 600 journalists assembled to see him at the Élysée Palace and the audience around the world watching with an intensity rarely accorded to a French policy agenda: the revelation last week of his affair with an actress and the drama of France’s brokenhearted first lady checking herself into a hospital, “in shock,” according to her staff.
“Everyone in his private life can go through difficult periods, these are difficult moments,” Mr. Hollande responded. “But I have one principle: Private matters should be dealt with privately.” So after a long prelude in which he delivered a sober and detailed analysis of France’s challenges and his proposals for addressing them, the questions began, and the first was on the affair and where it left his companion and official consort, Valérie Trierweiler. She had been scheduled to accompany him on his visit to Washington next month but has remained hospitalized.
He added, “This is not the place not the time, to do it,” but that he would answer the question about who was France’s first lady before a planned trip to Washington in February. “Everyone in his private life can go through difficult periods — these are difficult moments,” Mr. Hollande responded, evidently seeking to acknowledge reality. “But I have one principle: Private matters should be dealt with privately.”
Mr. Hollande, who has some of the lowest approval ratings of a French leader, focused his prepared remarks on an array of economic proposals that he said would spur growth and return France to its pre-eminence as one of the strongest countries in Europe. He also touched on foreign policy and a scattering of other topics, including the environment and the right to die. However, just seconds later it seemed obvious that much in his personal life had yet to be resolved. When the journalist who asked the first question, Alain Barluet, the head of the Presidential Press Association, asked whether Ms. Trierweiler was still the first lady, Mr. Hollande was noncommittal, suggesting that either he had not decided or that he was not about to address the issue publicly while she was still in the hospital.
He began the news conference by asserting, “We have to start a battle, start a new stage, a new phase.” He responded that he would make clear who the first lady is before leaving for Washington in a few weeks.
But his personal life has been a preoccupation since Friday, when the Closer published what it said were photographs of Mr. Hollande being driven on a scooter to an assignation with Ms. Gayet. On the same day, Ms. Trierweiler was admitted to a hospital where her office said she planned to remain for a few days to recover from the shock of the disclosure. The news conference was heavily covered by foreign news organizations, some of them clearly judging its value to be in something other than Mr. Hollande’s view on government regulation. But his responses will most likely satisfy the French, said Pierre Haski, the top editor at Rue89, an online publication, who was among those attending.
While many French citizens say Mr. Hollande is entitled to privacy — as he himself has protested, without denying the magazine’s allegations — the episode has spilled into the political arena with questioning about the status of Ms. Trierweiler as France’s unmarried first lady and the potential distraction from the country’s deepening economic woes. “There was a kind of sincerity in his first statement,” said Mr. Haski, adding: “Obviously anyone can be in his shoes and would be so embarrassed to have the dirty laundry of a couple in public. I don’t think this will be analyzed as anything against him, to be honest.”
Figures in Mr. Hollande’s Socialist Party and others had said the political nature of the Tuesday news conference — a fixture in the nation’s calendar at which leaders can normally expect undivided attention to their policy agendas — should be preserved. Polling has suggested that most French sympathize with Mr. Hollande and do not believe he should be evaluated based on the women in his life.
“This is not a soap opera,” said Jean-Louis Borloo, leader of a centrist party. “It’s about time he seriously explained how he’s going to turn the country around.” The liaisons of French politicians and their demands for privacy are viewed as more acceptable than they are in the United States, which has a more puritanical approach. And as important, the French president still enjoys some of the respect that used to be due a monarch, so his private life is not a matter of discussion unless he chooses it to be.
Mr. Hollande had planned to devote the encounter with journalists to proposals to reduce unemployment and other economic measures, hoping to lift his fortunes as one of the least popular French presidents in decades. But, since Friday, the imbroglio surrounding his personal life has threatened to overshadow his efforts to reshape the policies of his first term. It has also drawn uncomfortable parallels with events in 2007 when questions began to be raised publicly about his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the singer Carla Bruni, whom Mr. Sarkozy later married. French commentators drew a sharp line between what Mr. Hollande said about his private life and what he said about economics, seeing both as important. On economics, some welcomed what they called a change in tone on fiscal matters, describing him as more decisive, leaderlike and clear.
Even earlier, President François Mitterrand was revealed to have maintained a secret family. His economic policy moves gratified business and upset labor, but suggested that he was ready to make some of the structural changes, including lowering taxes and cutting the budget, that he had avoided since his election in 2011.
David Assouline, a spokesman for the Socialist Party, said the news conference “must remain a major political event,” Reuters reported, signaling that Mr. Hollande was not going to address questions about his personal life. Although the center-right opposition criticized him for trying to divert the public’s attention from his private life by outlining a dizzying number of policies, supporters saw it as part of an effort to rebrand himself politically and show that he is not antibusiness.
Before he was elected in 2012, Mr. Hollande sought to position himself as a more “normal” person than his flamboyant predecessor. “Suddenly the French are discovering that he is like others, but in a less glorious manner, even a ridiculous manner,” Dominique Moïsi, a French political analyst, told The Associated Press. Mr. Hollande proposed a raft of new policies under the rubric of a “responsibility pact” among business, labor and the government.
He promised a roughly $41 billion cut in payroll taxes for business and independent workers and said he would reduce the French budget by about $70 billion by 2017, which would reduce the deficit by 4 percent.
François Heisbourg, a political and policy analyst at the Foundation for Strategic Research, noted that whether talking about the economy or his personal life, Mr. Hollande had shown self-control throughout the news conference, refusing to be drawn into emotional displays.
Yet, Mr. Heisbourg said, there was a certain vagueness on both counts.
While Mr. Hollande was clear on the tax cut, there were few details on how he planned to pay for it or how he proposed cutting the budget.
Similarly, the only clear thing about his personal life was that the drama was “not over,” Mr. Heisbourg said.
Mr. Hollande made clear that “this is going to go on for another few weeks,” said Mr. Heisbourg, referring to the president’s assertion that he will not answer the question of who is the first lady until close to the date of his departure for the United States in the second week of February.
“So it’s messier than we realized,” Mr. Heisbourg said.