Politics. Bottled Water Scandal: Former Health Minister Admits "Error of Judgment"
The day after the Senate inquiry commission's report deploring "a cover-up by the State," Aurélien Rousseau maintains that there is "no health scandal."
The Senate released its investigation report on bottled water on Monday. Illustrative photo: Sipa/Sebastien Salom-Gomis
Place publique MP Aurélien Rousseau , former chief of staff of Élisabeth Borne at Matignon and former minister, acknowledged this Tuesday "an error of judgment" on the case of treated natural mineral waters, recalling nevertheless that there was "no health scandal".
"When we look back and see the situation today, it's better to be clear and admit, yes, an error of judgment," declared on France Inter the man who was Élisabeth Borne's first collaborator between May 2022 and July 2023, before becoming Minister of Health until December of the same year. "It's serious because it's the consumers who paid the bill, but they didn't pay the bill with their health," he insisted.
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The case of illicit treatments used for certain mineral waters, revealed by the press in early 2024, was the subject of a "cover-up by the State" as part of "a deliberate strategy" , the Senate commission of inquiry into the practices of bottled water manufacturers accused in its report on Monday.
"When I was contacted as chief of staff, I was told that in 2021, Nestlé came to the government and said, 'We are applying treatments to water that we know are illegal, give us time,'" Aurélien Rousseau said on Tuesday. "What is certain is that in 2025, Nestlé has not yet complied, so today it should not have the right to use the name 'mineral water,'" he added.
"We would have been called crazy technocrats."But, he qualified, "if, in 2022, Nestlé had come to see the authorities and (knowing) that there was no health risk, we had decided to say 'ah well, it's over, you're no longer mineral water,' I think Nestlé would probably have said as they say today: 'we're going to close these sources.'" "We would have been called crazy technocrats," he said, given the risks this posed to employment. Today, he said, Nestlé must "be held accountable, including before the courts, for commercial deception."
More harshly, the national secretary of the Communist Party, Fabien Roussel, expressed his outrage at the government's "interference" with "industrialists who work directly with the Élysée Palace." "It's scandalous, the courts must take action," he declared on RTL.
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