Nearly 20,000 complaints, all closed without action. The Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) has dismissed the 19,685 “standard” complaints filed against several members of the government, the public prosecutor at the Court of Cassation announced on Monday. They targeted Prime Minister Jean Castex, Minister of Health Olivier Véran, Minister of National Education Jean-Michel Blanquer and Minister Delegate for Transport Jean-Baptiste Djebbari.
These complaints denounced in particular the health pass and the promotion of vaccination against Covid-19. They were written in identical terms from a paid form posted online by the anti-sanitary pass lawyer Fabrice Di Vizio. They had been filed between July 28 and December 31, 2021 with the CJR’s Requests Commission, the only court authorized to prosecute and try ministers for offenses committed in the exercise of their functions.
In his press release, the Attorney General François Molins, who acts as the public prosecutor at the CJR, explains that these complaints were examined by the commission of the requests in November, December and January, and that they were all closed without follow-up. .
Some accused Jean Castex and Olivier Véran of “failure to fight a disaster”. However, the commission considered that the health pass and the vaccination obligation constituted “positive acts and not abstentions”. Others also targeted Jean Castex and Jean-Michel Blanquer for “extortion”, arguing that “due to the regulations relating to the health pass”, they exercised “a moral constraint” to “force the French to be vaccinated”. But according to the commission, “the health pass is not compulsory and while there are alternatives to lead a normal daily life, no moral constraint (…) can be retained”.
The instruction of the CJR on the governmental management of the epidemic
Olivier Véran was also accused of “false advertising” for having promoted the vaccine in several advertising videos “while the extension of the marketing authorization to the group of people under 18 conditional is the subject of ‘an appeal to the Court of Justice of the European Union’. “It is in this case about institutional communication in times of health crisis and not advertising for commercial purposes”, retorts the CJR.
Finally, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari was criticized for not having taken “no measure to protect French citizens from the risk of contamination” in public transport. For the commission, nothing establishes the absence of measure.
Controversial lawyer Fabrice Di Vizio, a regular on Cyril Hanouna’s TV sets, said Monday evening on Twitter that he intended to file new complaints.
The CJR has been conducting an investigation since July 2020 on the government’s management of the Covid-19 epidemic, targeting the former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, the former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn and Olivier Véran, who succeeded him. In September, Agnès Buzyn was indicted for “endangering the lives of others” and placed under the more favorable status of assisted witness for “voluntary abstention from fighting a disaster”.