France broke with an age of presidential decorum yesterday when Nicolas Sarkozy used the majesty of the Élysée Palace to discuss his love life and announce his likely marriage to Carla Bruni, the model-turned-folk singer.

Mr Sarkozy said that he wanted to “break with a deplorable tradition in our country of hypocrisy and lies” by airing his liaison with the Italian former supermodel at his first formal news conference since his election last May. The public has been both fascinated and appalled by “Speedy Sarko’s” whirlwind romance since his divorce from Cécilia, his second wife.

François Fillon, the Prime Minister, and all Cabinet and presidential staff were arrayed before Mr Sarkozy in the gilded ballroom to hear him preview the coming year with 600 journalists in a ritual that was devised by Charles de Gaulle in the early 1960s.

After an hour-long speech on the “new civilisation” he plans for France, Mr Sarkozy was asked about reports that he would marry Ms Bruni on February 9. “It is serious,” he said. “But it is not the [Sunday newspaper] which will set the date. There are strong chances that you will hear about it when it has already happened.”

In October Mr Sarkozy, 52, announced his divorce two days after the event. In late November he met Ms Bruni, 39, a former companion of Sir Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton. He appeared before photographers with her at Disneyland Paris three weeks later and has since taken her on trips to Egypt and Jordan.

Mr Sarkozy’s relaxed discussion of his “right to happiness” marked a further breach with the stuffy ways of the monarchical republic. Until “Super-Sarko”, French presidents up to Jacques Chirac enjoyed liaisons free of media scrutiny. In the 1970s Valéry Giscard d’Estaing was known to spend nights away from his wife, and from 1981 to 1995 François Mitterrand kept a mistress and their daughter as well as his official family at state expense.

Mr Sarkozy said: “You wouldn’t have asked that question of any of my predecessors. I reflected a lot on this,” he said. Alluding to Mitterrand, he said: “Everyone knew. No one talked about it. With Carla, we decided not to lie . . . I didn’t want them to take a sordid photo of me early in the morning,” he said. He recalled that Mitterrand flew both his households in state aircraft to holiday on the Nile, where Mr Sarkozy and Ms Bruni spent Christmas, travelling on the private jet of a friend. “I don’t allow myself to judge my predecessors. Everyone must live as they see fit. Life is so difficult and painful,” he said.

The President delivered a pugnacious defence against charges that he is stage-managing his private life to divert attention from discontent over his management of the country. “I take responsibility for my actions . . . If you feel you are being manipulated, don’t send your photographers after me,” he told media chiefs in the audience. His aides said there was no intention to relax strict privacy laws.

Mr Sarkozy talked of his unhappy divorce and said that he had been wounded by suggestions that he announced it to divert attention from a transport strike. “I told myself that people who wrote such articles must never have been divorced,” he said.

Pictures of Mr Sarkozy’s trip to Jordan last weekend have caused trouble. Some included Ms Bruni’s son, Aurélien Enthoven, sitting on the President’s shoulders and holding his hand. Lawyers for Raphael Enthoven, the child’s father, warned editors that they could face suits for publishing his son’s picture.

The latest episode of “le Sarko show”, as the presidential soap opera is known, eclipsed his attempt to restore gravitas with the grand press conference and the survey of projects for his second year. Mr Sarkozy also announced the end of the 35-hour working week, the closure of France’s English-language international television news service and a revolution in state broadcasting, including internet taxes.

He will not have quelled discontent with what many see as his exhibitionism. A poll for Libération newspaper on Monday found that 63 per cent believe that Mr Sarkozy shows off his private life too much. The contrast between the President’s ostentatious romance and the struggling economy is partly blamed for a seven-point slide in his approval rating to 48 per cent over the past month.

Voicing a common view, L’Est Républicain, a regional newspaper, said: “The French people did not elect him to be a rock star. He forgot that he would have a romance with France, and not with himself and his paramour.” The Socialist opposition dismissed Mr Sarkozy’s performance as empty and irrelevant.

Mr Sarkozy’s haste in replacing Cécilia is spurring much comment in public and private. On Europe-1 radio, Eric Fassin, a sociologist, said Mr Sarkozy risked being forced to go ever more public. “After the saga of his separation, after his new affair, we will have a marriage, then perhaps a child, etc etc. The runaway Sarkozy machine is threatening to him and us.”

Le Parisien newspaper reported rumours yesterday that the former Cécilia Sarkozy was on the verge of marrying Richard Attias, the events organiser for whom she left Mr Sarkozy for most of 2005.

The media have also been painting a sulphurous image of Ms Bruni, a free-spirited woman and left-wing voter who said last year that passion only lasted three weeks and that she could never be monogamous.

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