Valerie Benaim - Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni: The True Story

Friday November 23 rd , 2007

11 a.m, the Elyses Palace, official residence of the French President.

Nicolas Sarkozy meets Javier Solana, who was previously Spains Foreign Minister and is the serving European Union Commissioner for Foreign Affairs. Solana is travelling to China ahead of the French President; the two men want to co-ordinate their positions on a number of issues so that Europe presents a united front in dealing with Beijing.

When Sarkozy and Solana issue a communiqu, the diplomatic language is very restrained, with little by way of stick and lots of carrots on offer. We want to deal frankly with the Chinese on a range of difficult areas including human rights, the communiqu says. But the documents overall tone suggests that human rights will not be allowed to obstruct trade.

And Sarkozy has more on his mind than affairs of state, this morning.

After Solana leaves, Sarkozy has a meeting with Denis Olivennes, chief executive of FNAC, a leading French bookshop chain. Olivennes has just chaired a committee on combating intellectual piracy and protecting French copyright interests in an increasingly challenging multi-media environment. The French have a real problem, here. Only 129 million people speak their language worldwide, against 560 million English-speakers and over a billion people whose first language is Mandarin. Very few French writers are well-known globally nowadays. Perhaps Simone de Beauvoir, and Sartre, of the recently deceased, while, amongst the living, only Michel Houellebecq has a significant profile in the English-speaking world. Classical French playwrights like Racine or Marivaux are rarely performed in English, while Shakespeare and Shaw indeed, even some 20 th Century American playwrights - are constantly staged in French. Proud as the French are of their independent film industry, it has a smaller global market share than Indias, and its audience is aging, as French youth turn to Hollywood blockbusters.

Olivennes introduces his report to a galaxy of French cultural stars, luminaries that few people in England or America will have heard of. He is not just Sarkozys political ally. If this ceremony had taken place a few years before, Carla Bruni would probably have accompanied Denis. They had an affair after he split from his wife. One of his friends told us:

Denis found her too intense and was worried that shed clip his wings. Though they did think of living together.

Today, instead of being at Denis side, Carla Bruni is at home, her smart apartment in Paris elegant 16 th arrondissement. She still has a soft spot for Denis Olivennes;

Hes a real man of the left. I know that some readers of Le Nouvel Observateur, (a leading French weekly journal) are upset that he has written this report for the President. Ive seen the violent reactions in the e-mails readers send in. Theyre quite amazing, she says.

Intellectual piracy is an issue of real concern to Carla, as she has been a victim of it herself. She is a successful singer-songwriter, and her music, like that of most recording artists in the digital age, has been freely traded through online file-sharing networks: without her receiving a penny in royalties.

Sure its good when music travels, its good for the life of a work to get it out there. But whats not so good is when that gets out of control, when people seem to think they can use material without paying. It does nothing for the glory of France when we let ourselves be exploited. You have to draw the line when it gets out of hand. And then punish those who do it.

In the Elyses Palace, the speeches rumble on. Nicolas Sarkozy goes through the motions and shakes the appropriate hands but he is wrestling with a more personal issue. Soon he will have to reveal he is seeing Carla Bruni. When it comes to who the President is sleeping with, the personal is always the political. He discusses the problem of how to launch his new relationship with Jacques Seguela, an old friend and media expert. Sequela counsels patience, which is irritating, but the President knows his friend is right.