Nicolas Sarkozy expelled from the Legion of Honour after his conviction in the wiretapping affair

Former President Nicolas Sarkozy has been expelled from the Legion of Honour after his final sentence of one year in prison for corruption in the wiretapping affair, according to a decree published in the Official Journal on Sunday 15 June.

The former president (2007-2012), also excluded from the National Order of Merit, thus becomes the second French head of state to be deprived of this distinction after Marshal Pétain, from whom the Legion of Honour was withdrawn after his conviction in August 1945 for high treason and intelligence with the enemy.

This decision had been expected since Nicolas Sarkozy's conviction was made final by the rejection of an appeal by the Court of Cassation in December.

In the wiretapping case, the former head of state was found guilty of having, in 2014, attempted to bribe a magistrate of the Court of Cassation, Gilbert Azibert, in the hope of obtaining confidential information and with the help of his lawyer, Thierry Herzog.

All three were sentenced, at first instance and on appeal, to the same three-year prison sentence, one of which was firm.

With the rejection of his final appeal in France, Nicolas Sarkozy was subject to exclusion from the Legion of Honour, which is automatic when a recipient is definitively convicted of a crime or receives a prison sentence of one year or more.

In these cases, the withdrawal is "by right", stressed in March the Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honour, General François Lecointre, who signed the decree depriving Nicolas Sarkozy of the two titles of which he was a Grand Cross, the highest rank.

In recent weeks, the prospect of seeing the former president stripped of his Legion of Honour had provoked recriminations on the right and raised reservations at the highest levels of government.

"From my point of view, from where I am, I think it would not be a good decision," Emmanuel Macron declared at the end of April on the sidelines of a trip to Madagascar.

Under the order signed on June 5, Nicolas Sarkozy's two co-defendants, Gilbert Azibert and Thierry Herzog, are also excluded from the Legion of Honor and the National Order of Merit.

In addition to the wiretapping case, Nicolas Sarkozy is implicated in several legal cases and notably appeared in court in early 2025 on suspicion of Libyan financing of his 2007 presidential campaign. The judgment in this case will be delivered at the end of September.