Management of Covid-19: Édouard Philippe escapes an indictment

Published on: 22/10/2022 – 16:01 Following a first appearance interrogation before the investigating committee of the Court of Justice of the Republic, on Tuesday, the former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe escaped to an indictment and was placed under the more favorable status of assisted witness in the case of the government’s management of the Covid-19 epidemic. Summoned to explain the government’s management of the Covid-19 epidemic before the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR), former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe escaped an indictment on Tuesday, October 18 and was placed under the more favorable status of assisted witness in this case. Following Tuesday’s first appearance interrogation, the three judges of the CJR’s investigating committee placed the mayor of Le Havre under the intermediate status of witness assisted for endangering the lives of others and voluntary abstention from fighting a disaster, said a source familiar with the matter on Saturday, confirming information from Franceinfo. Contacted by AFP, his lawyer, Me Emmanuel Marsigny, did not did not wish to comment. The magistrates initially planned to indict him, but finally considered that they had not at this stage gathered the serious or concordant indications necessary to initiate proceedings. If he is not put under examination subsequently, Édouard Philippe could not be referred to the court of the CJR, the only court empowered to prosecute and judge members of the government for crimes or misdemeanors committed in the exercise of their functions. His summons before the CJR had been announced for October 24 but the interrogation was brought forward by a week. The former Prime Minister (2017-2020), now president of the political party close to the presidential majority Horizons and given among the presidential contenders of 2027, is criticized by some for not having ordered protective measures for healthcare personnel and exposed workers, nor for having anticipated the epidemic despite the alerts. According to Le Monde, he also had to explain himself on the maintenance of the first round of the municipal elections on March 15 while the contaminations intensified, and on the late activation of the interministerial crisis unit (CIC) on March 17. “I count you vigorously the incriminations which are reproached to me”, had assured on October 9 to the Parisian Édouard Philippe.>> To read – Covid-19: when can we decree the end of the pandemic?MasksThe magistrates of the CJR, who are investigating since July 7, 2020 on the government’s management of the crisis, indicted in September 2021 Agnès Buzyn, Minister of Health between May 2017 and February 2020 and now at the World Health Organization (WHO), for danger to the lives of others. On the other hand, they placed her under the status of assisted witness for voluntary abstention from fighting a disaster. “From the start, I only thought of one thing: the coronavirus. We should have stopped everything, it was a masquerade”, she declared to Le Monde on March 17, 2020 about the electoral process, while France was confined. The former Minister of Health Olivier Véran, today government spokesman, is also targeted by this instruction but has not yet been heard. “On the masks, we were wrong, neither more nor less”, he admitted in September at the exit of a book, presenting his “apologies”. France lacked masks.>> To read – From useless to mandatory, how the government changed its discourse on the mask The Head of State, Emmanuel Macron, is he criminally irresponsible for acts carried out in the exercise of his functions . In this case, several searches were carried out in October 2020, in particular at homes and offices of Olivier Véran and Édouard Philippe, Agnès Buzyn and former member of the government Sibeth Ndiaye. In parallel, investigating judges from the Paris public health center have been investigating since November 2020 the responsibilities of the administration of the State, also implicated by several hundred plaintiffs. To date, according to figures from Public Health France, the Covid-19 epidemic has caused 156,000 deaths in France. In the past, two Prime Ministers have been indicted by the CJR, then released: Laurent Fabius for the contaminated blood case and Édouard Balladur in the case of the secret financing of his 1995 presidential campaign. With AFP