French Socialist leader charged over asbestos deaths

Martine Aubry, the former leader of France's governing Socialist Party, has been charged with manslaughter in a probe into whether state negligence contributed to thousands of deaths caused by asbestos exposure. The charges against Aubry relate to her time as a senior official in the ministry of social affairs, before she became a major figure in French politics. As the ministry's director of industrial relations from 1984-87, Aubry is accused of having helped to delay the implementation in France of a 1983 European Union directive designed to strengthen the protection of workers dealing with asbestos. The examining magistrate in the case believes Aubry bowed to pressure from industrialists lobbying against a complete ban on the use of the material and that she ignored warnings from French health authorities of a mushrooming epidemic of cancers and terminal lung diseases. Aubry has strongly denied all the charges, describing them as a "profound insult to who I am and the professional and political choices I have made throughout my life." Aubry, the daughter of former European Commission President Jacques Delors, has found herself caught up in a far-reaching probe into how the French authorities handled the emerging evidence of the dangers posed by asbestos between 1970 and 1997, when the material was finally banned. The specific charges against her relate to the case of workers employed at the Fereo-Valeo auto-components factory in Normandy. Asbestos was once widely used for car brake pads. An estimated 3,000 people currently die prematurely every year in France as a result of asbestos poisoning and there have been pessimistic predictions that the death rate could nearly treble over the next decade because of exposure in the 70s and 80s. Lawyers for Aubry, who was formally charged in the early hours of Wednesday following a marathon session with the magistrate, were expected to lodge a request for the charges to be dropped later in the day.