Peter Bills: French privacy laws dubiously applied

The vexed issue of privacy for personalities has been occupying a lot of thought in many people's minds of late. "The grave's a fine and private place, But none I think do there embrace."

The English 17th century poet Andrew Marvell had it right up to a point on privacy. But he'd be astounded by modern times; why, nowadays they embrace in public.

The vexed issue of privacy for personalities has been occupying a lot of thought in many people's minds of late. Lurid tales and photographs of people in the public eye being caught, if not "in flagrante delicto" certainly in compromising situations, has long dominated the debate about levels of privacy that should be afforded those in the public eye. Wealthy English footballers have recently hidden behind the mask of privacy to prevent newspapers publishing tales of alleged misdeeds.

A few years ago, a British tabloid newspaper got wind that a member of Tony Blair's Government, the late Robin Cook, was enjoying an illicit London liaison while his wife remained at home in the country, blissfully unaware of his infidelity. The paper, naturally unable to station cameras inside the house to prove the point, used a photographer to capture images of the Minister popping out early the next morning to feed the meter of his lover's car.

"Cock Robin" was the headline splashed across the pages of photos, and a nation laughed. Predictably, Cook's marriage fell apart.

But laws in European countries differ greatly. In France, such an act would be considered a gross personal intrusion into a person's private life. Thus, during a dinner in the French capital, I was astonished to see blank expressions on the faces of my dining companions when I asked for their views on the alleged infidelities of the French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, the former model and now singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

The startling revelation that both the President and his wife were allegedly having or had had recent affairs had been a major talking point in London society. Yet in Paris was widespread astonishment.

Not a single line of the story had appeared in print or on the internet in France. No-one had dared risk reproducing a story known to millions across the Channel in England, and one widely discussed in the freer German media.

If you have grown up accustomed to freedom of speech, however nefarious it may be, it is likely you will expect complete freedom to publish. If, on the other hand, you are accustomed to the laws of a country such as France where privacy is strictly upheld, you may well feel differently.

In France, the relevant law states: "Everyone has the right to respect for his private life. Without prejudice to compensation for injury suffered, the court may prescribe any measures, such as sequestration, seizure and others, appropriate to prevent or put an end to an invasion of personal privacy."

But that is not the point of this tale. By chance, just 24 hours after my dinner conversation in Paris, I tuned into a satellite TV programme on, quelle surprise, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

The first, but not most important thing to say was that it was stultifyingly boring. If you could get past the sycophantic interviewing style from one of BSkyB's blonde bimbos, your eyelids drooped as this former girlfriend of Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton who once posed naked for a magazine, went on and on about her largely boring views of life.

No, she didn't get involved in her husband's work interests. She didn't want anything to do with that and she didn't really like major events at the Elysee Palace.

She went there just when she had to, when people wanted events to be held there.

All she wanted to do was write and sing songs. She sounded utterly bored with the situation.

The crucial point was, here was the wife of the French President openly inviting a TV crew into her home, offering a guided tour of the Elysee Palace and revealing plenty about her personal life. Why? Well, presumably because it suited her to do so at that time. But where were those tough French privacy laws? Were we being told, in effect, that some favourable publicity is acceptable but the nasty sort, actionable? Surely, no court worth its salt would leave itself liable to such a charge.

The gross invasions from some of Fleet Street's finest have, in truth, been appalling at times. But there is surely a better system to enact on both sides of the English Channel than the anodyne version operating in France.

To sacrifice the freedom of the media on the altar of everlasting privacy for those in the public eye, who pick and choose when they want to use that same media for their own ends and purposes, seems at best a dubious application of justice.