Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been stripped of his Legion of Honour medal following his conviction to one year in prison for corruption. The decision was made public on Sunday, June 15th, in the Official Journal of the Republic. Nicolas Sarkozy is now excluded from the Legion of Honour, France’s highest state award created by Napoleon Bonaparte, as well as from the National Order of Merit. This reprimand had been expected since the final conviction of the former right-wing president in December, after the rejection of his appeal in cassation in the so-called “wiretapping” case. Sarkozy and his lawyer were accused of bribing a magistrate to provide them with information about ongoing judicial investigations concerning them.
President Emmanuel Macron, a friend of Sarkozy’s whom he supported throughout the trial, has said he was opposed to Sarkozy’s expulsion from the Order of the Legion of Honour. “I think it is very important that former presidents be respected, and therefore, as President of the Republic and Grand Master of the Legion of Honour, I will not take any such decision,” he explained. The problem is that the position of Grand Master of the Order gives Emmanuel Macron absolutely no power in this matter. Expulsion from the Legion of Honour is automatic when a recipient is convicted of a crime or receives a prison sentence of one year or more, which is the case here for Sarkozy.
Before proceeding with the exclusion, the Grand Chancellery of the Legion of Honour, headed by General François Lecointre, former Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, ensured that Sarkozy’s exclusion was in accordance with the statutes of the order.
Although the process of expulsion was started ex officio and is legal, the former president’s supporters are shocked by what they consider to be an injustice and an act of violence against a public figure. Before Nicolas Sarkozy, the only head of state to have been stripped of his Legion of Honour was Marshal Pétain, for acts of collaboration with the Nazis. For Sarkozy’s supporters, the parallel that may thus be drawn between Sarkozy and Pétain is completely unfounded.
The decision has been criticised on the Right beyond Sarkozy’s own camp. Rassemblement National (RN) president Jordan Bardella said he was “shocked,” believing that there is “a desire to humiliate Nicolas Sarkozy” in this symbolic withdrawal—even if it is provided for in the texts of the order. Bardella recalled the circumstances in which Sarkozy received the Legion of Honour. For him, it was not an automatic honorary decoration, as is the case for many civil servants who receive it ‘automatically’ during their careers, but for exceptional deeds, in his remarkable action as a young mayor of the town of Neuilly, during a hostage-taking at a nursery school that almost ended in disaster. At the time, everyone praised the exceptional courage of the local elected representative in handling a particularly complex situation without any loss of life.
Sarkozy announced through his lawyer that he had “taken note” of his exclusion and reiterated that an appeal against his conviction had been lodged with the European Court of Human Rights.
