Paris: Francois Hollande may be close to proposing to the actress, Julie Gayet, according to senior Socialist party officials who have reportedly asked the French president to clarify his status. “We’ve been hearing for the past three months that he’s going to formalise his relationship with Julie Gayet,” an official told the newspaper Le Parisien. Party leaders are reportedly concerned that if Hollande continues trying to keep his complicated private life out of the public eye, rumours about his relationship with the actress could overshadow the Socialists’ 2017 election campaign. “He has to clarify things and show that it isn’t just a casual fling,” one leading Socialist told Le Parisien.

Yves Azeroual, the author of a book called Passions of State, said: “Julie’s tired of being the mistress who has to hide. What’s more, in the eyes of the public, she looks like the one in the wrong. She’s been putting him under pressure for several weeks and he’s finally said yes.”

The disclosure of Hollande’s affair with Gayet, 43, made headlines around the world in December, prompting the 59-year-old president to end his relationship with Valerie Trierweiler, 49, the following month.

For weeks, public attention focused on Hollande’s love life rather than his policies. The affair had little impact on the president’s already dismal approval ratings, but it grew increasingly embarrassing for him to face constant questions about it.

If Hollande does marry, it will be for the first time. He did not wed Trierweiler or Segolene Royale, the mother of his four children. Royale, 60, is now his environment minister. He is widely reported to have begun an affair with Trierweiler, a journalist, before leaving Royale.

Gayet has not taken Trierweiler’s place at the Elysee Palace, where the former political reporter had an office and a personal staff of five, with four police officers employed full-time to guard her, although the position of “first lady” does not officially exist in France.

After Hollande’s massively publicised break-up with Trierweiler, his relationship with Gayet was reported to have foundered. Friends of the actress told reporters that she could no longer bear constant media exposure and wanted to shield her two teenage sons from intrusive paparazzi. However, Closer magazine, which revealed the president’s night-time trysts with the actress, reported last month that the couple had resumed their “love story”, claiming earlier reports that their affair was over had been planted.

It said the couple had only stopped seeing each other temporarily until the scandal died down. Speculation has been rife in the media that Hollande might marry Gayet on August 12 — his 60th birthday. If he does so, it will be bad news for French taxpayers. Trierweiler cost the public purse nearly half a million euros a year, and if Gayet does become first lady, she is expected to receive similar privileges.

— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2014