Three former French government officials who oversaw the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic were cleared of allegations that they mishandled the health crisis, one of the accused said Monday.
The decision comes five years after a top court in France opened an investigation into former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, who stepped down in July 2020, as well as ex-health ministers Agnès Buzyn and Olivier Véran. They were accused of “failing to fight disaster”.
Véran confirmed the decision in a post on the social media platform X.
“After years of proceedings, investigations, summonses, and public indictments, justice has spoken,” he wrote. “We committed neither fault nor intentional failure”.
Véran replaced Buzyn as health minister in February 2020, when she resigned to run for mayor of Paris.
The Court of Justice of the Republic, the only French court that can investigate government officials while they are still in office, opened the case in July 2020 after receiving dozens of complaints from doctors, patients, law enforcement, and others about their response to the pandemic.
Chief among their complaints included shortages of masks and other equipment, as well as the decision to hold municipal elections on March 15, 2020, just a few days before French President Emmanuel Macron announced nationwide measures to prevent the spread of the virus.
Buzyn had also been indicted for endangering the lives of others in September 2021, but France’s Court of Cassation dropped the charge in January 2023.
In his post on X, Véran said he had faced death threats and online misinformation during the probe into the “hypothetical scandal”.
