A 1,482-page ruling issued on July 7 by France's Cour de justice de la République grants non-lieu to Agnès Buzyn, Edouard Philippe, and Olivier Véran, but highlights grave shortcomings in the COVID-19 crisis management from January to July 2020. The magistrates identify a lack of anticipation, structural dysfunctions, and errors that could have prevented many of the 32,000 deaths. This merciless document could mark the history of France's pandemic response.
Issued on July 7 after five years of investigations, the ruling by the Cour de justice de la République's (CJR) instruction commission reviews the French executive's handling of the COVID-19 crisis. While granting a general non-lieu to former Health Minister Agnès Buzyn, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, and his successor Olivier Véran, the three magistrates deliver a harsh assessment of the January to July 2020 period.
They highlight multiple dysfunctions, including 'a crucial lack of anticipation' and 'the structural inefficiency of a system.' In their view, the country was 'poorly prepared and poorly equipped,' with insufficient strategic stocks, a late testing policy, a logistical crisis, a failure to anticipate the second wave, and unclear governance. Many of the 32,000 recorded deaths could have been avoided, they assert, pointing to errors and sometimes lies by the executive.
The magistrates faced obstacles from the reluctance of political officials but insist: 'It is definitively futile to seek in this information any procedural relentlessness.'
Regarding the March 15, 2020, municipal elections, the CJR believes the government prioritized this vote—crucial for the presidential party struggling with local elected officials—over sanitary security. Edouard Philippe's July 1, 2019, circular provided for an interministerial crisis cell, activated only on March 17, 2020. 'Only the will to maintain the first round of the municipal elections on March 15, 2020, justified this late implementation,' they note, questioning: 'Why not have resorted to it from the beginning of the crisis?'
Financially, the investigators discovered a ministerial fund for health crises established in 2004 but never funded. The Direction générale de la santé responded: 'No sum has come to fund this fund.' From 2017 to 2024, no alternative financing was planned. The magistrates target Jérôme Salomon, director from 2018 to 2023: 'None of the documents submitted to the file includes a request from him in terms of allocations of means or additional staff.' Rather than blaming international bodies, they urge questioning the French system.
