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French prosecutors dismiss close to 20,000 complaints against ministers

The Court of Justice of the Republic has closed down 19,685 legal complaints brought against the French Prime Minister, Health Minister and Education Minister over their handling of the pandemic.

Published: 25 January 2022 16:20 CET

French anti-vaccine lawyer, Fabrice Di Vizio, helped lodge nearly 20,000 claims against French government ministers. This legal action has been dismissed. (Photo by Philippe LOPEZ / AFP)

French prosecutors announced on Monday that 19,685 of legal complaints filed against the Prime Minister and cabinet members responsible for health and education had been dismissed.

The man behind the complaints was a controversial anti-vaccine lawyer called Fabrice di Vizio, who sold access to a template online for those wishing to launch a legal challenge against the government. Di Vizio is best known for defending Didier Raoult, the French scientists who controversially touted hydroxychloroquine as a ‘cure’ for Covid.

Thousands of the criminal claims were more or less identical and targeted the politicians for their handling of the pandemic.

Prime Minister Jean Castex and Health Minister Olivier Véran were accused of “failure to stop a disaster”, which is a crime punishable by two years of imprisonment and a €30,000 fine.

The Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer was accused in the claims of “extortion”, with plaintiffs arguing that he was “forcing people to get vaccinated.”

Di Vizio is currently under investigation by the Paris Bar Council for having lodged the complaints against the French government in the first place. He has stepped back from the legal profession and has said he would sell shares in his legal practice.

The complaints had been initially been filed at the Court of Justice of the Republic, a special institution created in 1993 to prosecute ministers.

In 2020, before Di Vizio filed his claims, it launched a wide-reaching investigation into the handling of the pandemic by the government and health authorities. Olivier Véran’s home and offices were raided by police – the same happened to the country’s Director General of Health, Jérôme Salomon.

Former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and former government spokesperson Sibeth Ndiaye were also thought to have been under investigation. None of these figures were eventually charged.

But in September 2021, this court did charge the former Health Minister Agnes Buzyn with “endangering the lives of others”.

Buzyn had controversially said in January 2020 that there was “practically no risk” of Covid-19 spreading to France from the Chinese city of Wuhan, and then went on to say that the “risk of a spread of the coronavirus among the population is very small”. She stepped down as health minister in February 2020 in order to contest the Paris mayoral election.

Her case is ongoing.

France’s Court of Justice was created in 1993 especially to prosecute ministers, with the aim of making it easier to hold them accountable for failures in office.

The special court, called the court of justice of the republic, was created in 1993 to prosecute ministers as a way of improving accountability due to perceptions that cabinet members were able to escape legal censure for their actions in office.

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With his emphasis on, “strategic autonomy” for Europe in the economy and defence, many see subsequent events like the Covid pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine validating Macron’s vision.

But the minister acknowledged that the president’s star power might be “less powerful than in 2019”, when voters last picked the Brussels parliament.

Macron’s popularity has been battered by two years of minority government and contentious reforms on issues including pensions and immigration.

Polls show that inflation driven by successive crises is also a top concern for people feeling the pinch in their weekly shopping.

Surveys point to support in the high teens for Macron’s centrist party, well below the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) at around 30 percent, while the Socialists are snapping at the presidential camp’s heels for second place.

“It would be a real earthquake if the president’s majority came third” in the European elections, said political scientist Bruno Cautres.

The head of the governing party’s list for the elections, the little-known Valerie Hayer, is failing to make an impact, especially in the face of high-profile figures leading the rival lists in the shape Jordan Bardella, 28, for the far right and Raphael Glucksmann for the left.

It now appears Macron is ready to wade into the campaign in person.

On Thursday, Macron “wants to reclaim the initiative, avoid humiliation and try to keep the number-two spot at any cost,” Cautres said, noting that there was little hope his party could overtake the RN.

Heading into the European election, “Macron is hanging on to the core of his base”, said communications consultant Marie d’Ouince, a veteran of French centre-left politics.

“It’s still very early” in the campaign, she added, suggesting that support for the president’s party, “may crystallise bit by bit, but you need the right arguments”.

“We’re organised, we have the right candidate… above all we have the right ideas,” Macron said in Brussels last week alongside Hayer, a sitting MEP who has never held a government post.

For d’Ouince, “with recent international events, since Covid, Europe has become part of everyday life for French people”.

Macron should use the speech to “tally up everything Europe has contributed for France”, she said.

“Macron has always been at the cutting edge on the European question,” lending his voice weight at “a grave moment” for the bloc, Cautres said.

But he will have to remember he is addressing the French voting public, not just a prestigious university or think-tanks in Paris and Brussels.

Macron “has to be simple”, using “sentences… with a subject, a verb and an object,” d’Ouince said, citing a maxim of former president Francois Mitterrand.

“For instance, ‘If we hadn’t had Europe, we wouldn’t have had the vaccines'” against Covid, she suggested.

The eurosceptic, anti-immigrant RN has its riposte to Macron prepared. “This speech, whose content I can anticipate… will also mobilise our voters,” figurehead Marine Le Pen said this week.

She added that RN would call for France’s national parliament to be dissolved for new elections if the president’s party suffers a crushing defeat.

With three years until France’s next presidential election, Macron will hope to avoid setting up the RN for a win after twice selling himself as the man to exclude the far right from power.

He cannot run again in 2027, which adds the challenge of fending off a succession battle in his own camp that could leave him a lame duck.

Recent polls show his approval rating at just below 30 percent, leaving the risk that “his unpopularity wins out and people don’t listen to him”, d’Ouince said.