The judicial inquiry into the French government's handling of the Covid-19 crisis is over, with no indictments for former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe or health ministers Agnes Buzyn and Olivier Veran.
The Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) opened an investigation in July 2020, a few months into the pandemic, after receiving complaints about a lack of protective gear for healthcare workers and unclear government instructions about the spread of the virus.
“A notice of the end of the inquiry was issued on 28 November,” Remy Heitz, prosecutor at the Court of cassation, who acts as the public prosecutor for the CJR, told the AFP news agency Monday, confirming a report by Franceinfo.
“Furthermore, nobody to date has been indicted.”
The CJR, the only court that can investigate acts committed by members of the government while they were in office, received an increase in complaints during the Covid pandemic, which caused more than 116,000 deaths in France in 2020 and 2021.
Former Health Minister Agnès Buzyn, who left the government soon after the start of the pandemic to run for mayor of Paris, was indicted in 2021 for “endangering the lives of others”, by downplaying the gravity of the Covid-19 virus.
The Court of cassation dismissed the charges in 2023, saying there was no legal provision to hold her directly responsible.
She and Philippe, who was Prime Minister until July 2020, were involved in the disastrous mismanagement of France’s FFP and surgical mask stocks at the start of the pandemic.
Philippe was also accused of putting the population in danger for allowing municipal elections to be held as scheduled.
The end of the CJR’s investigation with no indictments paves the way for a dismissal of the charges in the coming months.
(with AFP)
