Five years after the start of investigations into the handling of Covid-19 at the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR), three former members of the government, including Edouard Philippe, were acquitted on Monday afternoon.
"The CJR's investigating commission has issued a decision of dismissal," announced Rémy Heitz, Attorney General at the Court of Cassation, in a brief statement, without detailing the magistrates' motives.
This decision is not a surprise.
The dismissal of the case requested in May by the public prosecutor in favor of the former Prime Minister (May 2017-July 2020), the former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn (May 2017-February 2020) and her successor Olivier Véran (February 2020-May 2022) removed the prospect of a trial, even if it was up to the CJR's investigating committee to decide.
"It was expected," Ms. Buzyn simply responded when contacted by AFP.
"We did the maximum that was possible at the time (...) to save as many lives as possible," she told Libération afterwards.
"The CJR did not only look at ministers, nor at the possible responsibilities, unpreparedness and lack of responsiveness of other people," she added, pointing to the "initial passivity of other institutions, such as the president of the Order of Physicians" or the response received by Professor Didier Raoult.
Mr. Véran, for his part, spoke in a statement of "a dismissal without joy or relief," saying that he "will not erase the death threats or the insults," and sending his thoughts to the victims, their families and caregivers.
Mr. Philippe has not yet responded, nor has his lawyer.
The CJR is the only court empowered to prosecute and try members of the government – Prime Ministers, Ministers and Secretaries of State – for crimes and offences committed in the exercise of their functions.
The judicial investigation was opened in July 2020 for endangering the lives of others and willful failure to combat a disaster, following a series of complaints (doctors, patients, unions, etc.) denouncing poor anticipation by the government or late measures.
According to Public Health France, 168,000 people died from Covid-19 between 2020 and September 2023, the date on which the World Health Organization declared the global health emergency.
The three politicians had been placed under assisted witness status. In January 2023, the Court of Cassation overturned Ms. Buzyn's indictment for endangering the lives of others.
– “Numerous initiatives” –
Rémy Heitz, who serves as public prosecutor at the CJR, explained in May that the investigations covering the first half of 2020 had established that "numerous initiatives (had) been taken by the government to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, preventing the offence of willful abstention from combating a disaster from being established against" Messrs. Philippe and Véran.
Regarding Ms. Buzyn, the public prosecutor noted that she left her position on February 16, 2020, before the first death of an infected patient, nine days later.
According to these requisitions, which AFP has seen, if the measures taken "were not sufficient to avoid tragedies which have brought grief to many families", the penal code "does not aim to punish a public policy which has not fully achieved its objective", "but individuals who have voluntarily refused to take any measures likely to combat a disaster".
"This is not the case for Mr. Philippe and Mr. Véran, who, each at their own level, fought the epidemic from its emergence in France."
– “Excessive centralization” –
"It is not up to the criminal judge to pass judgment on the relevance" of the choices made, sometimes resulting from "arbitration between opposing objectives of general interest" and in a context of "constantly evolving scientific knowledge," the public prosecutor's office had estimated.
If masks were particularly lacking among healthcare workers in the private sector in March 2020, this was the result of a government "choice" to "prioritize hospital services" and not a "failure to act."
The lockdown, deemed too late by the complainants, is also a "political choice" to "arbitrate between different objectives": "public health, freedom of movement, freedom of work"...
This analysis appears to diverge from that of the magistrates of the investigating commission who, even though they decided to dismiss the case, highlighted "excessive centralization", "the excessive complexity of administrative systems" and "the insufficient size of Public Health France", the public prosecutor's office noted in May.
This case will contribute to the judicial investigation opened against unknown persons at the Public Health Unit of the Paris court for endangering the lives of others, manslaughter and unintentional injuries.
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