French President Emmanuel Macron swept to power in 2017 after running as an independent centrist who promised to be an ambitious reformer, including on ethics, following corruption scandals that had tarnished previous administrations.
Two of Macron’s top allies in government are now facing judicial investigations, but the president has made clear he won’t budge on his support for them.
Dupond-Moretti seemingly received similar assurances.
“When you have not yet exercised the responsibilities, you think you can be a white knight, more virtuous than others … and then reality catches up on you,” Socialist Jean-Jacques Urvoas, a former justice minister under Macron’s predecessor, François Hollande, said. “
In this week’s developments, however, the pressure is first and foremost coming from legal proceedings.
Bayrou, Macron’s top ally in his governing coalition (and himself still under investigation over his party’s alleged misuse of EU funds), buried the old charged-means-out rule in an interview to Le Monde: “There are more and more formal indictments and allegations in front of the courts,” he said. “