François Hollande threatens legal action over affair claims

The glossy celebrity magazine Closer published a special edition on Friday including a seven-page report on the leader's alleged relationship with Julie Gayet. In a statement from the Elysée Palace, Hollande did not directly deny the report but accused the magazine of breaching his privacy. He said advisers were looking at what action to take against the magazine, which caused a storm in 2012 after publishing paparazzi photographs of the topless Duchess of Cambridge on a private holiday in the south of France. The statement said Hollande "deeply deplores the attacks on the principle of respect for privacy, to which he, like every citizen, has a right".

Closer published photographs showing a man in a motorcycle helmet outside what it said was Gayet's Paris apartment, along with a man reported to be the president's bodyguard.

Hollande's partner is the former Paris Match journalist Valérie Trierweiler who is considered to be France's first lady. He has four children with the politician Ségolène Royal, who ran against Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2007 presidential race. In March last year, Gayet, 41, began legal action to identify who was behind internet rumours that she was romantically involved with the president.

During Hollande's 2012 election campaign she took part in a political broadcast in which she described the presidential candidate as "humble", "incredible" and a man who "really listens". In the past, the French media have been considerably more circumspect about the love lives of the country's leaders, who have taken refuge behind the country's strict privacy laws. For many years, the last Socialist president of France, François Mitterrand, led a double life with his wife, Danielle, and lover, Anne Pingeot, with whom he had a daughter, Mazarine. Although the existence of Mitterrand's second family was an open secret, nothing was ever published until Paris Match obtained photos of Mazarine, then aged 20, and got the president's permission to publish them.

The Closer story provoked a storm on Twitter, coming just hours after the banning of a show by the controversial comedian Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala , and the announcement that La Redoute, a mail order company, was laying off hundreds of staff.

Journalist Guy Birenbaum wrote in the Huffington Post that the idea of personal privacy in France was being dragged into the 21st century. What would have started as polite whispers during chic dinner parties now "becomes information, some days or some weeks later".

"Nobody powerful,(including the president) has the power these days to stop or block anything, and certainly not this "type" of thing," Birenbaum wrote.

"The era when twenty Parisian journalists "protect" the second family of a president of the republic for years on end has passed. With Twitter, François Mitterrand's secrets would have lasted a month, the "escapades" of Chirac, not more than three weeks ... it's a fact, not a cry of joy."

He concluded: "The happy set up newspaper stories with pictures of Madame, Monsieur and their children, belong to the past."

Reaction to reports of the alleged affair brought a rare unity to France's political class. Harlem Désir, head of the ruling Parti Socialiste said: "It's nothing to do with political life, therfore I don't see whyit should be a political debate. There should be respect for the private person and for the presidential role. I have no comment to make." Marine Le Pen, president of the far-right Front National had the right agreed. "I agree with having respect for privacy, for everyone. As long as it doesn't cost the taxpayer a centime, I consider that everyone has the right to have their private life respected ... any attack on this shocks me."

Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said: "As a citizen, the president of the republic, François Hollande, has requested that his private life be respected. He is right. I have nothing to add to what he has said." Laurence Piau, editor of Closer, told Europe 1 television: "He's a normal president, a normal person. He's a president who's fallen in love and an affair. Everyone has to calm down over the photographs."