The French presidency drains about €92 million a year - will incoming president Sarkozy's penchant for lush living push that huge figure up further, asks Lara Marlowein Paris
Just 214 years after the French guillotined Louis XVI, they may have elected another king. This one is called Nicolas Sarkozy, and many of the 19 million French people who voted for him on May 6th see him as a providential leader.
Sarkozy will take over from President Jacques Chirac on May 16th. The next five years will tell whether he will, like his predecessors, indulge in the luxury of the "republican monarchy" - the term coined by the academic Maurice Duverger in the 1960s - or keep his vow to create "an irreproachable republic".
"I don't know what the president-elect will do," says Nicolas Charbonneau, a presenter at France's leading radio station, Europe 1, and co-author of the book Le Roi Est Mort? Vive Le Roi!, published during the presidential election campaign. "The French president is a sun king who has the right to pardon, to appoint and divest at whim," Charbonneau continues. "He is surrounded by courtesans and disposes of an infrastructure worthy of a king, with an unlimited treasury." René Dosière is a socialist deputy in the National Assembly who spent the past five years researching and writing a book entitled The Hidden Money of the Élysée. Since the Fifth Republic was established by Charles de Gaulle in 1958, the annual presidential endowment granted by parliament has exploded.
"It's quite extraordinary that there is no text that says how the Élysée should be treated," Dosière says. The president sets his own salary of about €80,000, but that's just pocket money. The endowment has grown to €32 million this year, for which the president is not in the least accountable. "From 1995 until 2006 (Chirac's two terms of office), the endowment was multiplied nine-fold, an increase of 790 per cent," notes Dosière.
But that is only one third of what the presidency spends. Through sheer perseverance, Dosière has finally obtained a figure for the amount provided by government ministries to the Élysée: €60 million, giving a total of €92 million per annum to keep the French presidency afloat. He says the Queen of England is a better deal, at €54 million a year.
There are at least five presidential residences. When you consider that the Élysée Palace alone has 365 rooms, a cinema, a four-star kitchen that serves 200 meals a day and 12,000 vintage bottles in the presidential wine cellar, you begin to understand why it costs so much in tax-payers' money. The caterer's bill for the July 14th garden party alone is €490,000, Dosière has learned.
"It's very surprising to see the extent to which France, after killing her king, keeps finding new kings," says Charbonneau. "There is nothing comparable to it elsewhere. I studied European monarchies for my book. They are more republican and more democratic than our presidency. The things the French president of the republic allows himself would be unthinkable in Spain, Holland, Belgium, England or the Scandinavian monarchies."
Royal traditions, such as the hunts at Chambord, Marly and Rambouillet, continue under the president's patronage. Former president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing reinstated the custom of le trou (the hole), whereby no one was allowed to sit opposite the king . . . er, the president, at dinner. François Mitterrand took the sweepstakes for monarchical behaviour, commissioning a statue of himself and housing his mistresses the way Louis XIV lodged his favourites at Versailles. When Mitterrand hosted a G7 summit at Versailles in 1982, he placed servants in 18th-century costume in the throne room and hall of mirrors.
Jacques Chirac has been regal in his relations with the media and his reclusiveness. "The press does not challenge authority," Charbonneau laments. "The journalists are courtesans; you don't criticise a system that you collaborate with." Every July 14th, the Élysée chooses two or three reverent journalists to interview the president. The president speaks to the nation simultaneously on all major radio and television stations, whenever he deems it necessary.
But there is no question of shouting an impromptu question at the French president as he walks across the lawn, the way journalists do at the White House. A few years ago, a Belgian reporter spoke to the outgoing first lady Bernadette Chirac as she shopped in the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. "You wouldn't approach your queen like that!" Mrs Chirac scolded the Belgian. "You are not the queen of France!" the journalist reminded her.
President-elect Sarkozy says he wants to change the nature of presidential power, for example by reporting to the near powerless National Assembly, and making nominations subject to bipartisan approval.
But Sarkozy's taste for power and luxury make his opponents think the monarchical presidency is not about to end. This week, Sarkozy celebrated his election by flying on a billionaire friend's jet to the Mediterranean island of Malta, where he spent three days with family and friends on the billionaire's yacht. "People criticised the 'caviar left'," Laurent Joffrin wrote in Libération newspaper. "Now we have the jet-set right." Sarkozy was quick to point out that his Mediterranean escapade did not cost the Republic one cent. Perhaps, says René Dosière. But he quotes documents obtained by the investigative newspaper Le Canard Enchâiné: for Sarkozy's summer holiday in the Landes region of southwest France last summer, the interior ministry paid €25,000 for a villa and deployed 18 policemen, 50 riot police, four vehicles, two speed boats, two cooks, three butlers and a helicopter.
"If he does the same thing at the Élysée," Dosière predicts, "he might even beat Chirac. The student may surpass the master; it's going to be expensive."