France’s environment minister, Francois de Rugy, resigned on Tuesday following a series of reports by a French investigative website about his high spending on private dinners and renovations to his ministry residence.
In a posting on his Facebook page, De Rugy said he handed his resignation to Prime Minister Edouard Philippe because the “effort required to fight the accusations” meant that he could no longer carry out his ministerial duties “peacefully”.
“I would like to thank the president of the Republic and the prime minister for the trust they have shown in me,” De Rugy wrote, adding that he had filed a criminal complaint against the investigate website Mediapart over its reporting.
De Rugy, 45, was appointed in September 2018 to succeed Nicolas Hulot, a well-known environmental campaigner who had also resigned because he did not feel President Emmanuel Macron was sufficiently committed to his ecology programme.