It’s a sword of Damocles that still hangs over François Bayrou’s head. The affair of the European parliamentary assistants of the MoDem, for which the new Prime Minister will have to be judged once again, is still pursuing him. On February 8, 2024, the prosecution appealed against the acquittal pronounced against him three days earlier. The date for the appeal trial has not yet been set. But if François Bayrou was still at Matignon when it was held, this would be a first for a serving Prime Minister.
In this case, 11 individuals, including the three-time centrist candidate in the presidential election, were tried in the fall of 2023 before the Paris Criminal Court. At issue: suspicions of embezzlement of European funds, used to pay parliamentary assistants who in reality worked for the UDF then the MoDem.
“Benefit of the doubt”
If the court recognized the misappropriation of public funds with the remuneration of parliamentary assistants from the funds of the European Parliament to carry out tasks for the benefit of the parties, it acquitted François Bayrou on February 5, 2024 “for the benefit of the doubt”. The court in fact underlined that “no element allows us to assert” that he “was aware of the non-execution of the parliamentary assistant contracts”.
The court acquitted two other people, but sentenced eight others to suspended prison sentences and a two-year suspended ineligibility. “For me, it is a nightmare of seven years which has just ended with a decision without challenge from the court,” declared François Bayrou after his acquittal.
“Evidence against all the defendants”
This acquittal had confirmed Emmanuel Macron in his choice to no longer part with ministers worried by the justice system, a doctrine which evolved according to the difficulties of his presidency. But three days later and the day after François Bayrou’s decision not to join Gabriel Attal’s government, the prosecution appealed against the acquittals. “The prosecution contests these acquittals, considers that the facts characterize the offenses charged and that the evidence of these offenses is gathered against all the defendants”, said the prosecution in a press release signed by the public prosecutor Laure Beccuau.
This case has been pursuing François Bayrou, 73, since the opening of a preliminary investigation by the Paris prosecutor’s office in March 2017 after the denunciation of a former elected representative of the National Front, Sophie Montel. The mayor of Pau’s party claimed at the time to have respected the rules but suspicions were not well-founded. The head of the MoDem had been appointed Minister of Justice within the Philippe government on May 17, 2017 and he then carried the bill on the moralization of public life, one of the priority projects of the Head of State after a presidential campaign tainted by business. François Bayrou was forced on June 21, 2017 to resign from the government.