Born’s attorney said his client has always denied “the tyranny of transparency”.
Paris:
The French prime minister was accused of “censorship” on Wednesday at a court hearing that reviewed his decision to sue the publisher of a new biography detailing intimate details of his private life.
Elisabeth Borne, the 62-year-old former technocrat President Emmanuel Macron named to lead his cabinet last year, was little known to the public before being promoted to the job after five years as a second-level minister.
The case has reignited a debate in France about whether the private lives of politicians should be kept out of the public eye.
In the book “La Secrete” (The Secretive One), written by French journalist Berengère Bonte and published on 4 May, the author refers to rumors about Borne being gay, which the French Prime Minister has denied several times.
In the chapter titled “The Cover”, the journalist who interviewed Bourne twice for the book reveals the name of the man who has been presented to the press as his accomplice and says that he will be seeing another as recently as 2021. The woman had a civil partner.
Asked by Reuters, Born’s lawyer declined to comment on why the man was in a civil partnership with another woman and whether she was his current partner. His office declined to comment.
The book also mentions the suicide of her father, a Jewish-born Holocaust survivor. It also describes Bourne as workaholic prone and suggests that he had put on so much weight under stressful conditions at previous jobs that it prompted concern among family members about his health.
Breaking with the precedent of other French prime ministers who have refrained from suing journalists, Bourne has asked judges to force L’Archipel publishing house to cut about 200 lines from future editions of the book, which have already Already sold out.
“When a journalist describes in detail the circumstances of my father’s suicide, when she makes intrusive comments about my intimate life, my son, my relationship with my ex-husband, when she questions my health or sexual orientation If she accuses, how can she pretend.” It was done with my consent?” he said.
“At some point, one just wants to say: ‘Enough is enough,'” she told Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper in an interview.
At a court hearing on Wednesday, defense lawyer Olivier d’Entin said it amounted to nothing less than “censorship”.
As recently as the 1980s and 1990s, the French media often refrained from publishing aspects of politicians’ private lives, a form of self-censorship that was criticized when it emerged that former French presidents François Mitterrand kept secret the existence of a daughter whom he had taken care of. Public money.
On Wednesday, Borne’s lawyer said his client has always denied “the tyranny of transparency”.
“Elizabeth Born knows there is no democracy without freedom of the press,” lawyer Emily Sudre told the judges. “She is asking for a measure that is not disproportionate.”
“She arrived at the prime minister’s office and nobody knew her,” writer Bonte told Reuters. “So much the better if people find out who she is. Thanks for that.”
The verdict is expected on June 30.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)