Officially, energy transition minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher's office is saying nothing. Her entourage did not respond to any of the questions put by Mediapart, and instead simply held up the threat of legal action (see the Boîte Noire box below). Unofficially, Mediapart's investigation into the behaviour of her partner, Nicolas Bays, and his interference in the work of her ministerial team has been the subject of many private conversations for the last two weeks both inside the ministry and across the government.
According to Mediapart's information, Nicolas Bays, who was a socialist member of Parliament from 2012 to 2017, and who is said to be close to President Emmanuel Macron, has on several occasions interfered in the internal affairs of his partner's ministry, where he holds no official title or position. In theory, ministers' partners have no role in their spouse's public duties. But Nicolas Bays has overridden this rule - despite warnings and concerns over the issue.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Until mid-November, when the websites Disclose and Politico published investigations into Agnès Pannier-Runacher's family financial affairs, Nicolas Bays was still part of several Telegram messenger groups used by the minister's office and was regularly present at the ministry's offices at the Hôtel de Roquelaure off Paris's Boulevard Saint-Germain. When his partner was first appointed as minister, Bays also helped with staff recruitment and was personally involved in the minister's complaint to the civil service administrative body, the Secrétariat Général du Gouvernement (SGG), about the initial location chosen for her office.
What makes this interference in the life of the Ministry for Energy Transition even harder to fathom is the fact that at the same time the former MP held the post of advisor to the junior minister for military veterans, Patricia Mirallès. He recently left that position to join the Défense Conseil International (DCI) company, which describes itself as the “operator of the Ministry for the Armed Forces for the transfer of know-how to France's Partner countries”.
A file kept under wraps
According to Mediapart's information, the situation reached such a point that at the end of October a member of Agnès Pannier-Runacher's office was obliged to send the minister's chief of staff, Mélanie Mégraud, a file containing screen grabs of the many text messages that Nicolas Bays had sent her. This female member of staff had reported these messages to her line managers because she saw them as orders about what tasks she had to perform and as reminders about her own lack of job security. This ministerial advisor did not respond to Mediapart's request for comment. Nicolas Bays also declined to comment on this particular case, stating via his lawyer Olivier Bluche that he “categorically denies all … claims, allegations and accusations” (see the Boîte Noire box below).
This is not the first time that Nicolas Bays's position in Agnès Pannier-Runacher's ministerial team has raised concerns. In May 2020, and as obliged to by the law, he left his position as her chief of staff when she was a junior minister for industry, just after their relationship became official.
But the former MP continued to make his presence felt in his partner's ministerial office, before in December 2021 he became chief of staff to the then education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer; this followed a failed attempt to work in the private sector. “I was receiving messages at all hours of the day and night,” said one former member of the ministerial office at the industry department, who said she felt “trapped” between Agnès Pannier-Runacher and her partner.
“Unsubtle, ambiguous, inappropriate and repeated” comments
Nicolas Bays's behaviour had already raised concerns when he sat as a socialist MP in the National Assembly between 2012 and 2017; these issues were of a different nature but still involved the workplace. At least four men, Parliamentary staff or political activists, report being the victims of inappropriate gestures made by him when he was MP for the Pas-de-Calais département or county in northern France. These reportedly occurred during the period in early 2013 when the French Parliament was debating proposed legislation to allow same-sex marriage.
A former intern who worked under Nicolas Bays at the time received several text messages in which the MP made a number of sexual allusions, delivered in a jokey or ribald tone. In these messages, seen by Mediapart, the MP wrote to the young man: “A bonk would do you good”, “You should have stayed and massaged my back, that would have occupied your evening” and “By the way, do you know how to do a back massage??” In April 2013, in another text message, Nicolas Bay also suggested a “cuddle” before adding: “A cuddle is good”.
This testimony is backed by a second man who recalls having discussed the situation with the intern, who told the other man at the time of the “unease” that these “unsubtle, ambiguous, inappropriate and repeated comments by Nicolas Bays” had caused him. “I was personally horrified by his behaviour,” said the second man. This man, who agreed to talk anonymously, but whom Mediapart will call 'Antoine', said that he was himself a victim of what he describes – ten years after the events – as “sexual assault”.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
During that period Antoine spent time with Nicolas Bays in the 'Club Bourbon', a name given to a group of people from political circles who met up regularly at a brasserie near the National Assembly. After one such evening the young man recalled how he had walked a few metres with the MP towards the metro. He said that the socialist MP then “took advantage of the darkness to put his hand on my bum”. He said: “This wasn't just a friendly gesture but was a sexual assault. Even today, nearly ten years later, the memory of that act fills me with the deepest disgust.”
Nicolas Bays did not give a detailed response when questioned about these various accounts. His lawyer Olivier Bluche said that “in 2011 the National Assembly appointed an ethics officer to whom all staff could make a complaint” and that the Parliamentary administration had “alert mechanisms”. The lawyer added: “Consequently, if people had really had acts that could have constituted offences, professional failings or ethical breaches to complain about, then they would have complained to [these bodies].”
One evening in the Parliamentary refreshment room, after repeated approaches, Nicolas Bays ended up touching my bottom.
Another former Parliamentary staffer told Mediapart about an episode that he said took place during a period of late-night debates at the Assembly about the same-sex marriage legislation. “One evening in the Parliamentary refreshment room, after repeated approaches, Nicolas Bays, who had drunk a lot of alcohol, ended up touching my bottom,” he said. “I reacted and pushed him away.” This account was confirmed to Mediapart by a female colleague of the young man who said that he had described the episode to her just a few minutes afterwards, once they had returned to the Assembly chamber.
According to her, the pair had also gone on to speak about the “MP's behaviour and the fact that he might be too insistent with young men, especially in the sending of SMS messages”. It was a discussion that they would take up again, with other Parliamentary staff, in the following weeks. This informal group viewed Nicolas Bays's attitude at the time as “inappropriate and problematic”. Indeed, at least one other of their colleagues had received repeated and ambiguous messages from the socialist MP.
Links with former ambassador from Qatar and ex-bodyguard Alexandre Benalla
An increasingly marginalised figure within the Socialist Party (PS) – he was one of the party modernisers in 2012 alongside the high-profile MP and later minister Arnaud Montebourg – in 2016 Nicolas Bays became involved in the creation of Emmanuel Macron's new political movement En Marche. The MP organised Emmanuel Macron's first visits to the Pas-de-Calais.
At the time Bays – who had been criticised for his closeness to the former ambassador from Qatar when he was vice-chair of the Parliamentary national defence committee, and who according to the political website Politico now rents a home belonging to the Dassault family who own the defence and aviation group of the same name – had forged links with several people close to the future French president, including the future presidential bodyguard Alexandre Benalla.
Years later, and despite his failure to get re-elected as an MP for Macron's La République en Marche (LREM) party in 2022, Nicolas Bays has continued to use his closeness to the inner circle in power. A former ministerial adviser who spent time with Bays when the latter worked for education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer explained: “From the start he would say 'Hello, I'm very much part of the scene you know, I'm a minister's partner.' He also lets you know that he is 'close to Emmanuel' or 'the boss', that he's not a nobody and that he knows things.”
“He's nice despite being irritating,” added the former colleague. “You don't really know what he does, and he comes out with jokes that are very close to the mark, but as he has created this idea that he's important, people say to themselves 'Yes, but that's part of his character.'”
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter
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