Alain Jocard, AFP | In this file photo taken on July 14, 2017, then President of the French National Assembly Francois de Rugy (R) arrives with his wife, Severine Servat, ahead of the start of the Bastille Day parade on the Champs-Elysees avenue, Paris.

French Environment Minister François de Rugy, at the centre of a controversy over lavish spending, announced his resignation on Tuesday but lashed out at what he claimed was a “media lynching”.

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De Rugy was the former president of the National Assembly (the lower house of parliament) and the minister of energy and ecology. In an article published on July 10, investigative website Mediapart described de Rugy and his wife as “living like royals on public funds” and inviting friends to “sumptuous receptions” in the Hôtel de Lassay, the official residence of the head of the National Assembly.

"The attacks and media lynching targeting my family force me to take the necessary step back ... I presented my resignation to the prime minister this morning," Rugy said in a statement on Tuesday.

De Rugy also said he had filed a libel suit against Mediapart over its allegations.

The site, for its part, reacted to his resignation by calling it a victory of “information over public relations” in a statement to AFP.

“You don’t hold public office hostage in order to defend yourself,” said Mediapartco-founder Edwy Plenel in an interview with FRANCE 24 on Tuesday. “François de Rugy needed to learn the consequences very quickly. Public money should not be used for private functions."

Plenel also said that “work on an apartment should not be at the discretion of a ministerial couple", adding: "These are apartments that belong to the Republic, they should be managed differently.”

The Mediapart revelations claimed more than 10 lavish dinners were held between October 2017 and June 2018. According to the website, staff served bottles of vintage wines and champagnes taken from parliamentary cellars to guests who were mainly personal friends of the couple.

Photographs showed de Rugy's wife Severine Servat-de Rugy in front of bottles of grand cru wine and platters lined with lobsters.

Speaking in an interview on French TV channel BFM last week, however, de Rugy insisted he has “never paid more than €30 for a bottle of wine” and doesn’t eat lobster because of a “shellfish allergy”. He said he avoids champagne as it “gives him a headache”.

EM video French minister François de Rugy resigns over spending scandal

‘Grotesque’ smear campaign

After the Mediapart revelations, the story was quickly picked up by other French media outlets. De Rugy attempted to get ahead of the scandal by going on France Inter radio that very same day, dismissing the article as nothing more than a “grotesque” smear campaign.

According to him, the receptions were justified expenses, part of his working life. They allowed him to meet with representatives from different sectors, he said, “some of whom we knew, others we did not”.

De Rugy acknowledged that his wife had participated in organising the dinners and selecting the guests, but he refused to accept that the pair had done anything wrong.

“We have nothing to reproach ourselves for, neither she nor I,” he said.

He also offered a longer explanation in a July 10 Facebook post. But the tone remained determinedly defensive and unapologetic, which has only increased media attention of the matter.

Mediapart added fuel to the fire when it published new revelations, this time about de Rugy’s chief of staff, Nicole Klein. Klein had allegedly been holding on to a council flat in Paris since 2001, even though she hadn't lived in the capital full-time since 2006. She said she regularly used the apartment when she returned for the weekend, keeping it out of "ease and negligence".

De Rugy immediately demanded that she step down and she reluctantly complied, "at the request of François de Rugy”.

On July 11, Mediapart published a follow-up article and photographs, revealing that after de Rugy and his wife moved into his official ministerial apartment they spent more than €63,000 on refurbishments.

The renovations included a brand-new dressing room for a somewhat exorbitant €17,000 in taxpayer money.

When asked by Mediapart about the cost of the dressing room, Servat-de Rugy did not have a direct answer. "It's not really a dressing room, it is just wardrobes. And when we arrived, there were none, nothing. I don't know what to tell you," she said.

It was further revealed that the work was predominantly decorative rather than essential construction.

The minister’s office justified the cost of the work saying de Rugy had to use “qualified craftsmen” due to “the particular character of the building”, an 18th-century edifice in the 17th arrondissement (district) of Paris.

EM! Catherine Norris-Trent analysis of de Rugy affair

A green activist who rose to the top

De Rugy, 44, is a long-time politician and environmentalist. First elected to parliament in 2007 with the European Greens, he quit the party in 2015, criticising its "leftist drift" under the presidency of François Hollande. He founded his own green party that same year but joined Macron’s La République En Marche party in 2016.

De Rugy was appointed environment minister in September 2018 after serving as parliament speaker for just over a year.

When he first took up the post as National Assembly president in June 2017, de Rugy said that he “wanted the Assembly to be open and transparent. We often reproach male and female politicians for being cut off, living only in their political world in a kind of bubble”.

De Rugy might now be wishing he could return to that protective bubble.

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