Nicolas Sarkozy's Legion of Honour Retention: Appeal Filed with Administrative Court

A medal on the chest that is causing a stir . While Emmanuel Macron ruled out, on Thursday, April 24, withdrawing the Legion of Honor from Nicolas Sarkozy, judging that "it was very important that presidents and former presidents be respected," several people are now contesting this refusal in court.

According to information from Le Monde , half a dozen people, descendants of decorated members, will file an appeal before the Paris administrative court this Tuesday, May 6. In this 13-page text filed by lawyer and former Green MP Julien Bayou and consulted by the daily, the applicants ask the administrative judge to "order" the Order of the Legion of Honor to note "the legal exclusion of Mr. Sarkozy." They believe that "withdrawing the Legion of Honor and the National Order of Merit from former President of the Republic Nicolas Sarkozy is not a lack of respect for the office of president, it is a way of protecting it."

Because despite his final sentence of three years in prison for influence peddling and corruption in December in the wiretapping affair, Nicolas Sarkozy has retained this distinction ever since. "No order establishing Mr. Sarkozy's legal exclusion has been published in the Official Journal," Julien Bayou castigates in the columns of Le Monde . And this despite the launch of the disciplinary procedure by General Lecointre, Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honor, on March 4.

However, the Legion of Honor code is clear: if a person is convicted of a crime or sentenced to a prison term of one year or more, disbarment is automatic and must be ordered by presidential decree. For Julien Bayou, also the grandson of Raoul Bayou, former MP for Hérault and officer of the Legion of Honor, this decision is a breach of the code.

Among the applicants represented by the lawyer, Eric Bazin, former editor-in-chief of the Gamma agency and grandson of Henri Troussard, a knight of the Legion of Honour, said he was "outraged" by this special treatment from the former president. He considers this decision "deplorable" and wants to make the stripping of Sarkozy's distinction a "fight for honour".

Another applicant, Agnès Bayou, sister of the former Green MP, said to Le Monde that the refusal to withdraw the medal from Nicolas Sarkozy "is a slap in the face for all those decorated."

In his appeal, Mr. Bayou states that since a February reform of the Order of the Legion of Honor, "it is the Grand Chancellor who is competent to determine the exclusion of the order by right," that is, General Lecointre. Emmanuel Macron, who is Grand Master of the order, is said to have thus expressed himself "on a matter that does not fall within his area of ​​competence."