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Ex French president Hollande marries actress Julie Gayet in quiet ceremony

After a romance that made headlines around the world when it was revealed in 2014, ex-president François Hollande has married actress Julie Gayet at a low-key ceremony in his political fiefdom in central France.

Ex French president Hollande marries actress Julie Gayet in quiet ceremony
France's former President Francois Hollande and Julie Gayet, pictured in 2021. Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP

The news was announced to La Montagne newspaper by the mayor of Tulle, Bernard Combes, with a picture of the couple showing the groom in a suit and his bride in a white dress climbing the stairs of the local town hall.

They married Saturday “in a private ceremony,” the mayor’s office in the central Correze region told the paper.

Little was revealed about the guest list beyond the presence of French singer Benjamin Biolay who worked with Gayet on a film in 2021.

Hollande, who has never married before, had an affair with Gayet while president and in a relationship with journalist Valerie Trierweiler, who was France’s de facto first lady at the time.

In January 2014, French glossy magazine Closer published bombshell photographs of Hollande arriving for a tryst with Gayet on a scooter at an apartment near his official residence in the heart of Paris.

The images, accompanied by a story replete with salacious details about bodyguards being dispatched to buy croissants for the pair in the morning, dealt a severe blow to Hollande’s credibility.

Trierweiler went on to write a best-selling tell-all memoir that recounted how she tried to commit suicide in the presidential bedroom after the media revelations.

Hollande has four children from his relationship with long-term former partner Segolene Royal, a one-time rival in the Socialist party.

Gayet has two sons with former husband Santiago Amigorena, an Argentinian screenwriter and producer she divorced in 2006.

The 50-year-old — who celebrated her landmark birthday the day before Saturday’s wedding — remained a low-key presence throughout the latter part of Hollande’s difficult time in office.

The couple agreed to their first joint photo session only in 2018 once Hollande had left office, having ended his five-year term in power with record low approval ratings.

In a rare interview the same year, she described Hollande’s time as leader as a period of “crazy violence” which included a series of jihadist attacks that cost hundreds of lives.

“I tried to give energy to the president, to take care of him, to be there to listen,” she told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper.

“Since I met him, it’s given me wings,” added the star of Netflix drama “The Perfect Mother” who is an increasingly influential film producer. “I love his way of thinking, of being, his humour.”

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EMMANUEL MACRON

France’s Macron blasts ‘ineffective’ UK Rwanda deportation law

French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday said Britain's plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was "ineffective" and showed "cynicism", while praising the two countries' cooperation on defence.

France's Macron blasts 'ineffective' UK Rwanda deportation law

“I don’t believe in the model… which would involve finding third countries on the African continent or elsewhere where we’d send people who arrive on our soil illegally, who don’t come from these countries,” Macron said.

“We’re creating a geopolitics of cynicism which betrays our values and will build new dependencies, and which will prove completely ineffective,” he added in a wide-ranging speech on the future of the European Union at Paris’ Sorbonne University.

British MPs on Tuesday passed a law providing for undocumented asylum seekers to be sent to Rwanda, where their asylum claims would be processed and where they would stay if the claims succeed.

The law is a flagship policy for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government, which badly lags the opposition Labour party in the polls with an election expected within months.

Britain pays Paris to support policing of France’s northern coast, aimed at preventing migrants from setting off for perilous crossings in small boats.

Five people, including one child, were killed in an attempted crossing Tuesday, bringing the toll on the route so far this year to 15 – already higher than the 12 deaths in 2023.

But Macron had warm words for London when he praised the two NATO allies’ bilateral military cooperation, which endured through the contentious years of Britain’s departure from the EU.

“The British are deep natural allies (for France) and the treaties that bind us together… lay a solid foundation,” he said.

“We have to follow them up and strengthen them, because Brexit has not affected this relationship,” Macron added.

The president also said France should seek similar “partnerships” with fellow EU members.

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