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

A very rare sanction for a former president: Nicolas Sarkozy was expelled from the Legion of Honour after his conviction, which has become final, to one year in prison for corruption in the wiretapping affair , according to a decree published Sunday in the Official Journal.

He was also expelled from the National Order of Merit, becoming the second French head of state to be deprived of this distinction after Marshal Pétain, who was stripped of the Legion of Honour after his conviction in August 1945 for high treason and conspiring with the enemy. "Nicolas Sarkozy acknowledges the decision taken by the Grand Chancellor (of the Legion of Honour, editor's note). He has never taken this matter personally," his lawyer, Patrice Spinosi, said in a statement to AFP.

This disciplinary sanction, about which President Emmanuel Macron had expressed reservations, had been expected since the former head of state's conviction in the wiretapping affair was made final by the Court of Cassation's rejection of an appeal in December. In this case, Mr. Sarkozy 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, with the help of his lawyer, Thierry Herzog. All three were sentenced to three years in prison, one of which was suspended.

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.

The former president has, however, filed an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which "is still pending," his lawyer argued on Sunday, saying he hopes his conviction will be overturned and, as a corollary, the withdrawal of the Legion of Honour.

"I note that there is an appeal against the court decision. This matter is therefore not yet completely over," added the head of French diplomacy, Jean-Noël Barrot. - "Indignant" - On the right, voices denounced the sanction imposed on Mr. Sarkozy and castigated any parallel with the withdrawal of the Legion of Honor from Pétain.

"This link with Marshal Pétain is unworthy," said government spokeswoman Sophie Primas (LR), adding that she was "a little reserved, not about the rule, but about the comparison it entails." "It's a rule, but it's also a shame," lamented LR Secretary General Othman Nasrou. Louis Sarkozy, for his part, downplayed the extent of the punishment imposed on his father, assuring that he felt "pride and honor toward him today, as he does every day."

At the end of April, Emmanuel Macron himself expressed reluctance at the idea of ​​seeing his distant predecessor stripped of the Legion of Honor. "From my point of view, from where I am, I think it would not be a good decision," he declared, even though the president plays no role in automatic exclusions linked to criminal convictions.

On the left, the decision was welcomed in the name of equality before the law. "The French have a lot of trouble understanding that justice should be applied differently depending on the person," declared LFI MP Manuel Bompard.

Green Party MP Benjamin Lucas welcomed the fact that "the Republic is stripping the person who has dishonored his office of his privileges and institutional influence." Under the order published Sunday, Nicolas Sarkozy's two co-defendants, Gilbert Azibert and Thierry Herzog, are also barred from the Legion of Honor. In addition to the wiretapping charge, Nicolas Sarkozy is implicated in several other cases and appeared in court in early 2025 on suspicion of Libyan financing of his 2007 presidential campaign . The verdict will be handed down at the end of September.