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President spends €900,000 on UN trip

President Francois Hollande’s bill during his trip to New York for the United Nations General Assembly has been revealed - and is €100,000 less expensive that of Nicolas Sarkozy’s last year.

Published: 27 September 2012 10:34 CEST

Hollande’s bill is reported in daily paper Le Parisien to have come to a total of €900,000, which covers his partner Valérie Trierweiler, 61 staff and two nights in a luxury hotel.

But Hollande is apparently good at bargaining – he got the best suite at the famous Setai hotel for a third of its original €3,000 price tag. The Italian delegation reportedly asked for tips on how to better negotiate for next year.

The president and his team also hosted a dinner for 1,500 French people living in New York in the Roseland Ballroom, a famous Broadway theatre, which totalled €400,000.

In September 2009 Sarkozy hosted a similar event in the Manhattan Center Studio, but invited 4,000 French people.

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French president's ex girlfriend says she has been sacked by magazine

Valerie Trierweiler wrote a tell-all book about the former president's affair. Photo: AFP

The journalist took revenge on Hollande for spurning her for actress Julie Gayet with a sensational 2014 kiss-and-tell memoir called Thank You for This Moment, which all but sank Hollande's presidency.

The book became an instant bestseller, and Hollande, a Socialist, never lived down his alleged references to the “toothless” poor.

Trierweiler, 55, had worked for the glossy weekly as a political correspondent, interviewer and columnist for three decades.

j'ai appris en plein cœur de l'été et pendant mes congés de façon extrêmement brutale mon licenciement de Paris Match où je travaillais depuis trente ans. Ce licenciement sans aucun motif valable me laisse en état de choc et de sidération. #parismatch

— Valerie Trierweiler (@valtrier) August 13, 2020

“I discovered in the middle of my summer holidays in an extremely brutal way that I have been sacked from Paris Match after 30 years,” Trierweiler said on Twitter.

“This sacking was for no reason and has left me shocked and astonished,” she added.

Trierweiler was famously admitted to hospital after Hollande's affair was revealed by paparazzi images of his nightly visits by scooter to Gayet's apartment.

The politician had tried to portray himself as a safe pair of hands “Mr Normal” in contrast to his mercurial predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy.

As well as spending most of her career at Paris Match, Trierweiler also interviews politicians for the French television channel Direct 8.

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