France’s Justice Minister François Bayrou on Wednesday handed in his resignation as his party battles a funding scandal.

Bayrou’s resignation comes hours before President Emmanuel Macron reshuffles his government, BBC reported.

The minister’s centrist party MoDem, allied to Macron’s La République en Marche party, is facing an inquiry into claims that it used EU funds to pay party workers.

MoDem has lost all three posts in Macron’s cabinet within 24 hours. Defence Minister and former member of European Parliament Sylvie Goulard was the first MoDem minister to hand in her resignation on Tuesday.

After Bayrou said he was standing down, it became clear that European Affairs Minister Marielle de Sarnez was also leaving the government to take over as head of MoDem in the National Assembly, the report said.

Macron’s close ally Richard Ferrand also stepped down on Monday amid allegations that he had used insider information to secure a property deal for his wife while he was head of a mutual health insurance fund.

Ferrand and Goulard denied any wrongdoing. Bayrou said he will hold a press conference later in the day at 5 p.m. </s> Image copyright Reuters Image caption Francois Bayrou (right) has resigned from French President Emmanuel Macron's cabinet

France's Justice Minister, François Bayrou, resigned on Wednesday hours before President Emmanuel Macron announced his new government line-up.

It meant that Mr Bayrou's centrist party, MoDem, surrendered all three of its cabinet posts within 24 hours.

President Macron came to power with a promise to fight political sleaze.

MoDem, allied to Mr Macron's La République en Marche (LREM) party, is facing an inquiry into claims that it used EU funds to pay party workers.

Defence Minister and ex-MEP Sylvie Goulard was the first MoDem minister to hand in her resignation on Tuesday.

After Mr Bayrou said he was standing down early on Wednesday, it became clear that Marielle de Sarnez, European affairs minister, was also leaving the government to take over as head of MoDem in the National Assembly.

Image copyright AFP Image caption Marielle de Sarnez (centre) is also understood to be resigning

The resignations were not confined to Mr Bayrou's party. Mr Macron's close ally Richard Ferrand stepped down on Monday, amid unrelated allegations he had used insider information to secure a lucrative property deal for his wife while he was head of a mutual health insurance fund.

Mr Ferrand and Ms Goulard have both denied any wrongdoing.

However, the allegations have cast a shadow over the new government. It was François Bayrou who outlined details of a bill to clean up politics.

Three of the figures brought in to replace the four who resigned were women from civil society rather than politics:

Legal expert Nicole Belloubet leaves France's constitutional council to replace François Bayrou as justice minister

Nathalie Loiseau, ex-diplomat and head of France's elite ENA training college for civil servants, is named European affairs minister

Rail executive and one-time Socialist budget minister Florence Parly takes up the defence brief

Jacques Mézard, who is in the president's LREM party, moves from agriculture to take over Richard Ferrand's post as territorial cohesion minister

Is Macron's promise to bridge the divide crumbling already? Analysis by Lucy Williamson, BBC News, Paris

The relationship between the outspoken Francois Bayrou and Mr Macron's government has been tense for weeks.

The French papers were full of anonymous sources from the president's party denouncing Mr Bayrou as having an "outsized ego" who "stops [them] from governing". "We can't keep moving forward," one said, "when we're always going back every five minutes to check whether Bayrou has made a mess again."

Image copyright AFP Image caption Sylvie Goulard stepped down as defence minister on Tuesday

Mr Bayrou's departure shows how difficult it can be to prevent scandal, even in those with a well-known political past. With so many new faces entering parliament this month after a rapid selection process, there's a risk those problems could multiply.

The president's party has a clear majority in parliament, even without the support of MoDem. But having vowed to bridge the left-right divide in French politics, Mr Macron may instead be facing a growing chasm with his centrist allies.

The bill to clean up politics included stopping politicians hiring members of their own family, a ban of up to 10 years for MPs and senators convicted of corruption or fraud, and reform of party financing.

Mr Macron will no doubt be hoping it quells concerns over his fledgling administration, which faces one of its first hurdles on Thursday when it presents controversial new anti-terrorism legislation.

Documents leaked to French newspaper Le Monde have already raised fears amongst civil liberties campaigners it may make France's emergency measures, which give authorities extra powers including the ability to carry out searches at any time, permanent.

Interior Minister Gérard Collomb told French newspaper Le Figaro [in French] the legislation would involve four flagship methods: creating protection areas around potential targets, closing places of worship which incite terrorism, replacing house arrest with personalised measures, and placing a judge in overall charge of searches and the resulting documents. </s> French interior minister Bruno Le Roux confirms his resignation on Tuesday, hours after the financial prosecutor’s office announced they were putting him under preliminary investigation for parliamentary jobs he secured for his daughters during their school holidays. Le Roux says he is stepping down so as to not distract from the work of the government
• French interior minister quits over holiday jobs for his daughters </s> (PARIS) — French Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux resigned Tuesday a few hours after prosecutors opened an investigation into a report that he hired his two daughters for a series of temporary parliamentary jobs, starting when they were 15 and 16 years old.

President Francois Hollande said he had accepted Le Roux's resignation after a meeting with Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve at the Elysee Palace. He named the country's low-profile trade and tourism minister, Matthias Fekl, as the new interior minister.

France's national financial prosecutor's office opened a preliminary investigation Tuesday after TMC television reported Monday night that Le Roux employed his daughters as parliamentary assistants for a total salary amount of 55,000 euros ($59,000) over 24 short contracts.

The office said the preliminary investigation into the facts disclosed in the TV program is being led by the French police agency charged with fighting corruption and financial and tax wrongdoing.

While it is legal in France for politicians to hire family members, the TMC report suggests that Le Roux's daughters did not perform all of the work. During some of their contracts as parliamentary aides, one of the daughters was doing a full-time internship in Belgium while the other was studying in an intensive class.

Le Roux's daughters, now 23 and 20, allegedly started working as parliamentary aides for their father over short vacation contracts when they were 15 and 16 and Le Roux was a lawmaker in the French National Assembly.

"These temporary and official contracts, in accordance with the legal rules of the National Assembly, all corresponded, of course, to work actually carried out," Le Roux, a member of the Socialist Party, insisted as he announced his resignation from Bobigny, a suburb outside Paris.

A similar scandal around employing family members has deeply damaged conservative Francois Fillon's presidential bid. Fillon was handed preliminary charges last week for allegedly using taxpayers' money to pay family members — his wife and two children — for jobs that may not have existed.

Left-wing politicians pointed out that Le Roux resigned as soon as the preliminary investigation had been launched, while Fillon decided to keep campaigning although he has been handed serious charges, including misuse of public funds, receiving money from a misuse of public funds funds and company assets. Fillon initially vowed to quit as presidential candidate if he were to be charged before changing his mind. Le Roux has not been charged so far.

While insisting he is law-abiding, Le Roux said he resigned because he didn't want the latest controversy to "undermine the work of the government."

He also said that as France's interior minister he had a "particular responsibility imposed by the daily struggle against terrorism, delinquency and the control of migratory flows" and that the mission can't afford to be affected by a debate about him.

Le Roux told the TMC program his daughters never got permanent jobs and has suggested their jobs weren't fake — in contrast to what investigators suspect in Fillon's case.

"They did work," Le Roux insisted in an earlier interview with the TMC journalist.

Jean-Christophe Picard, president of the anti-corruption association Anticor, said that Le Roux had to resign to avoid any conflict of interest since he was the top boss of the police officers investigating his case.

The swift judicial reaction to the report on Le Roux's daughters reflects a marked shift in French attitudes toward corruption in politics, notably since the new position of a national financial prosecutor was created three years ago.

Some of France's most prominent politicians — including former Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac — have been embroiled in corruption scandals involving accusations from shady campaign financing to nepotism.

But the French public is growing frustrated with a political establishment it sees as enriching itself while average workers suffer, and there is growing public pressure for transparency. </s> French Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux resigned on Tuesday over payments of public funds to his daughters, denying he had done anything wrong but saying he did not want the scandal to affect the government’s work.

The employment of family members by politicians has become a hot-button issue in France after conservative presidential election candidate Francois Fillon became embroiled in a similar scandal over the employment of his wife and two of his children as parliamentary assistants.

That scandal, known as “Penelope-gate” after the first name of his wife, has sent Fillon’s public ratings tumbling and made him an also-ran in a race in which he was once the front-runner.

Le Roux, the former head of the Socialist Party’s group in the lower house of parliament, became interior minister in early December in a government reshuffle.

He resigned after financial prosecutors opened an inquiry on Tuesday over press reports he paid his two daughters from public funds for parliamentary work when he was still a lawmaker and when they were of student-age.

“Those work contracts ... correspond to work that was effectively carried out,” said Le Roux, in a bid to distance himself from Fillon, who is accused of having paid his wife hundreds of thousands of euros for work she did not do.

The Elysee presidential office said the junior foreign trade minister, Matthias Fekl, would replace Le Roux. It did not say who would replace Fekl.

The Quotidien TV show said Le Roux had paid a combined total of 55,000 euros ($59,455.00) between 2009 and 2016 to his two daughters as parliamentary assistants during summer vacations, starting from when they were 15 and 16.

The inquiry further detracts from the image of the already deeply unpopular government of Francois Hollande near the end of its term. Le Roux alluded to that, telling reporters he had decided to resign because he did not want this issue “to harm the government’s work.”

The inquiry was launched after allies of Fillon suggested that any inaction by the judiciary in Le Roux’s case would show that Fillon, who says he did nothing illegal, was the victim of bias by the judiciary.

Members of the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament, are allowed to hire family as assistants and pay them from funds put at the disposal of all lawmakers.

At issue is the extent to which work was actually done for the money, which in Fillon’s case was in the region of 800,000 euros. </s> BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romanian Justice Minister Florin Iordache resigned on Thursday after a decree on corruption that he drafted triggered a week of street protests, international criticism and finally an embarrassing climbdown by the month-old government.

Romanian Justice Minister Florin Iordache walks after delivering a speech following his resignation in Bucharest, Romania February 9, 2017. Inquam Photos/Octav Ganea/ via REUTERS

The decree would have effectively shielded dozens of public officials from prosecution for graft and was widely viewed as reversing Romania’s drive to tackle endemic corruption. The government rescinded the decree on Sunday after the biggest protests in the country since the fall of communism in 1989.

“Ever since I arrived at the justice ministry I have ...done all legal steps to fix a series of existing and fairly sensitive problems,” Iordache told reporters.

“As you have seen, all the initiatives I have undertaken are legal and constitutional. However, this was not enough for public opinion, so I have decided to submit my resignation.”

Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu said European Affairs Minister Ana Birchall would also hold the justice portfolio until a permanent replacement for Iordache was chosen.

President Klaus Iohannis has the final say in approving ministerial replacements.

Iohannis, a former leader of the center-right opposition, strongly criticized the government over the decree. He has also called for a national referendum on continuing the fight against corruption.

The government easily survived a vote of no-confidence on Wednesday as it has a large parliamentary majority following an election in December. Parliament must still endorse the government’s decision to rescind the decree.

Earlier on Thursday Romania’s constitutional court said it would not rule on the decree as it had now been ditched. The country’s ombudsman had earlier asked the court to intervene.

Anti-government demonstrators took to the streets for a tenth consecutive day on Thursday, though numbers have fallen sharply since Sunday when a quarter of a million people took part in capital Bucharest.

An estimated 2,000 people, braving temperatures of -5 degrees Celsius (23 Fahrenheit), gathered outside government headquarters to demand the cabinet’s resignation. Protesters also rallied in other cities. </s> PARIS: France's financial prosecutor on Tuesday opened a preliminary inquiry over reports Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux hired his student-age daughters for summer jobs while a member of parliament.

A report by satirical TV show Quotidien said on Monday that Le Roux employed his two daughters several times as parliamentary assistants during their school breaks. </s> BUCHAREST, Feb 9 Romanian Justice Minister Florin Iordache resigned on Thursday after a decree on corruption that he had drafted triggered a week of mass street protests, international criticism and finally an embarrassing climbdown by the month-old government. The decree would have effectively shielded dozens of public officials from prosecution for graft and was widely viewed as reversing Romania's drive to tackle endemic graft.

Start the conversation, or Read more at Reuters. </s> A French interior minister has quit after it was revealed an investigation was launched into a report that he hired his two daughters for temporary parliamentary jobs while they were still in High School.

Bruno Le Roux was summoned by Prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve after the French financial prosecutor's office opened the investigation.

According to TMC Television, Le Roux employed his daughters while they were still teenagers, as parliamentary assistants for a total salary of 55,000 Euros (£48,000).

The national financial prosecutor's office said the preliminary investigation into the claims in the TV programme will be led by the agency charged with fighting corruption and financial and tax wrongdoing.

While it is legal in France for politicians to hire family members, the TMC report suggests Le Roux's daughters did not perform all the work. They were first hired while still in high school.

Le Roux, a member of the Socialist Party, was quoted by TMC as saying his daughters worked for him during school holidays to gain experience.

Le Roux's daughters, now 23 and 20, allegedly started working as parliamentary aides for their father over short holiday contracts when they were 15 and 16 and Le Roux was a legislator in the French National Assembly.

TMC said Le Roux's cabinet staff at the interior ministry confirmed the dates of the 24 vacation jobs the daughters held between 2009 and 2016.

Le Roux told the TMC programme his daughters never had permanent jobs and has suggested their jobs were not fake, unlike what the investigators suspect in the Fillon case.

'They did work,' he insisted in an earlier interview with the channel.

'Of course, my daughters worked with me during summer times, especially or during school vacation periods, but never permanently,' he said earlier in March.

Jean-Christophe Picard, president of anti-corruption association Anticor, told BFM TV that Le Roux should resign to avoid any conflict of interest since, as interior minister, he is also the top boss of the police officers investigating his case.

Benoit Hamon, the Socialist Party's candidate for France's April-May two-round presidential election, has urged Le Rou to 'quit the government' to 'lift suspicion'.

The swift judicial reaction to the report on Le Roux's daughters reflects a marked shift in French attitudes towards corruption in politics, notably since the new position of a national financial prosecutor was created three years ago.

The quick action of the prosecutor's office, which specialises in corruption, tax fraud and other complex cases with a national jurisdiction, became well-known when the Fillon case broke in late January.

Some of France's most prominent politicians - including former presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac - have been embroiled in corruption scandals involving accusations from shady campaign financing to nepotism.

But the French public are becoming frustrated with a political establishment it sees as enriching itself while average workers suffer, and there is growing public pressure for transparency.
François Bayrou resigns as France's Minister of Justice amid an ongoing investigation into the centrist Democratic Movement (MoDem)'s alleged fraudulent employment of parliamentary assistants.