Justice. Covid-19 Management: Dismissal Requested for Édouard Philippe, Agnès Buzyn and Olivier Véran

A dismissal of charges was requested on Tuesday against three former members of the government, including Edouard Philippe , in the investigation carried out at the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) into the management of Covid-19, announced Attorney General Rémy Heitz on Wednesday.

In this judicial investigation opened in July 2020 for endangering the lives of others and willful abstention from fighting a disaster, former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, former Health Minister Agnès Buzyn , as well as her successor Olivier Véran , are placed under the status of assisted witness. The investigation was closed last December, without indictment .

With these requisitions, the prospect of a trial is considerably more remote for these political leaders, even if it is now up to the CJR's investigating commission to decide.

"The investigations establish that numerous initiatives were taken by the government to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, preventing the offence of willful abstention from combating a disaster from being established against Edouard Philippe and Olivier Véran," explained Rémy Heitz, Attorney General at the Court of Cassation, who exercises the functions of the public prosecutor at the CJR.

For her part, Agnès Buzyn had been harshly criticized for leaving her position at the start of the health crisis to become a candidate for mayor of Paris.

It is ultimately this chronology that seems to exonerate her: the public prosecutor noted that she left her post on February 16, 2020, "a date on which no disaster within the meaning of the penal code had yet been characterized on the national territory since the first death of a patient contaminated by Covid-19 in France occurred on February 25, 2020."

Agnès Buzyn had also been charged with endangering the lives of others. However, she had her charges overturned in January 2023 before the Court of Cassation.

The CJR's judicial investigation stemmed from several complaints from doctors and associations denouncing, from the start of the lockdown in March 2020 in France, the lack of protective equipment for caregivers and the population, and the errors regarding the necessity or not of wearing masks.