All the institutions of our republic are experiencing a renewal in this summer of 2022. The National Assembly appointed by a vote on Tuesday evening the four new parliamentarians who will sit on the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR), including an LFI deputy and two RN . Are elected the ecologist Julien Bayou, the Insoumise Danièle Obono and the RN Bruno Bilde and Anaïs Sabatini.
They join LR senators Chantal Deseyne, Catherine Di Folco, Antoine Lefèvre, socialist Jean-Luc Fichet, centrist Evelyne Perrot and independent Teva Rohfritsch. The CJR, an institution created in 1993, competent to hold members of the government criminally responsible for acts (crimes or misdemeanors) committed in the exercise of their functions, is made up of 12 parliamentarians (six elected by the National Assembly, six elected by the Senate) and three judges from the seat of the Court of Cassation. Parliamentary judges are elected at each renewal of the Assembly or the Senate. Anyone can file a complaint with the CJR.
Ministers in the sights of the CJR
An institution contested for the slowness of its procedures and the leniency of its judgments, the CJR almost disappeared in 2018 under the first term of Emmanuel Macron, but the constitutional bill did not come to an end. François Hollande had also undertaken to remove it. Since its creation, it has tried seven ministers: three have been acquitted, two given suspended prison sentences, and two have been found guilty but exempted from punishment.
The Court of Justice of the Republic opened an investigation in July 2020 into the management by the authorities of the coronavirus epidemic after several complaints. In this case, the former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn was indicted on September 10 for “endangering the lives of others” and placed under the more favorable status of assisted witness for “voluntary abstention from fighting a sinister”.
Former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, Minister of Health Olivier Véran and former government spokesperson Sibeth Ndiaye are also cited in the CJR’s judicial information. The CJR rejected in June several requests from the Minister of Justice Éric Dupond-Moretti, indicted since July 2021 for illegal taking of interest. On May 9, the Attorney General at the Court of Cassation François Molins, who represents the public ministry before the CJR, requested a trial for the minister, judging that there were “sufficient charges” against him.