Elisabeth Borne requests the withdrawal of a major part of the book “La Secrète”, a biography which concerns her. The Prime Minister believes that this work violates her privacy.
[Updated May 11, 2023 at 8:13 p.m.] Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne sued the Archipelago editions on Wednesday, May 10, to remove certain passages from the biography dedicated to her, called La Secrète. The book, on sale since May 4, is not to the taste of the politician, who believes that certain passages infringe on her private life, reports RTL. In the summons brought before the Nanterre court, Elisabeth Borne requests the deletion of certain passages in “any new edition or reprint”. The copies already printed will not undergo any change. The Prime Minister evokes passages referring to her sexual orientation or her family life. The childhood of Elisabeth Borne, whose father committed suicide when she was 11, is thus presented in La Secrète.
A crucial theme poses a problem in particular: his sentimental life. The writer of the biography defended herself on this point at the microphone of RTL on May 4: “It turns out that it was she who staged the companion. She arrives at Matignon and let’s say things, there is these rumors of homosexuality which resurface. She denies, but not anywhere, in Têtu, a very identified magazine of the LGBT community, and she adds: “But I have a companion”.
The success of this book seems to exasperate Elisabeth Borne to the highest point. On May 11, 2023, it ranks sixth in the best-selling books on Amazon. Bérengère Bonte, the writer behind this book, is a journalist at France Info. She points out contradictions in her work.
If in Têtu, in 2022 Elisabeth Borne indicates having had a companion, the journalist specified having had confirmation of his identity from Matignon. However, this man indicates that he has been in a civil partnership with another woman since 2021 on his blog. And the author talks about it in her book, without having had the agreement of the Prime Minister.
Another theme disturbs Elisabeth Borne: her relationship with her parents. On RTL, the author describes “a very painful family history, it is a father who returns from the camps and commits suicide when she was 11 years old” to finally sum up his relationship with his parents to “a non-existent relationship”. According to the journalist, Borne took this sentence from his mother at age 11: “The day you were born, your father had an epileptic seizure, that was the beginning of the end.”
For Bérengère Bonte, the Prime Minister has “a complex personality: a mixture of fragility and strength. She is in tears the day she is appointed to Matignon because she is overwhelmed by all this family history that is hers.” An anecdote is also put forward by the writer: “In 2015, Élisabeth Borne, who had just learned of the death of her mother, would have asked Ségolène Royal to leave a farewell party. This request would have been refused by the former figure of the PS”. Elisabeth Borne was then the chief of staff of Royal at the time when the latter occupied the role of Minister of Ecology.
Elisabeth Borne believes, in her summons to justice, that passages “referring to her family life, this information cannot fall within the scope of a legitimate freedom of information of the public” should be deleted. The Prime Minister is also claiming one euro in damages and 5,000 euros in legal costs.
Editions de l’Archipel made a point of reacting to defend this book in a press release: “This book, the result of a year of investigation, dozens of interviews including two long interviews with Ms. Borne as well as others with prominent members of her cabinet, her family and her close circle of friends to whom she had given her consent, is the first biography of the Prime Minister appointed on May 16, 2022.