A decision which the president who defended in 2017 “an exemplary Republic” would have gladly done without: Emmanuel Macron has just signed a decree which suspends for two years Jean-Paul Delevoye from the exercise of the rights and prerogatives attached to his quality of officer of the Legion of Honor. This is one of the first cases of non-compliance with the rules on transparency in public life dealt with in discipline in the order of the Legion of Honor: in 2018, Yasmina Benguigui, Minister of Francophonie of François Hollande , had suffered a similar fate.
The former Chiraquian, who became one of Emmanuel Macron’s trusted men, to the point of chairing the nomination committee of La République en Marche for the 2017 legislative elections and then being appointed High Commissioner for Pensions and participate in this capacity in the Council of Ministers, had to resign in December 2019 after “oversights” in his declaration to the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP) – an incomplete and incorrect declaration of interests. Two years later, he was given a four-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 15,000 euros, without any ineligibility penalty against him or entry in his criminal record. He had chosen the “plead-guilty”.
“A fault is paid, it’s normal”
A few weeks ago, Jean-Paul Delevoye received a letter from the Council of the Order of the Legion of Honor requesting his counter-argument. If a person convicted of a crime or for a prison sentence of more than one year is automatically deprived of his decoration, a file is examined, according to an adversarial procedure, for any person who has been the subject of a final sentence of in corrections. The disciplinary sanction can be of three levels: a simple reprimand, a suspension or an exclusion. The council then gives an opinion, but the decision rests with the Grand Master of the Legion of Honour, namely the President of the Republic. Article 104 of the code specifies that “this opinion cannot be overridden except in favor of the legionnaire” – the president can attenuate the sanction, not increase it. The Elysée refuses to indicate whether Emmanuel Macron followed the opinion of the council of the order or modified it: the deliberations are confidential.
Contacted by L’Express, Jean-Paul Delevoye was unaware of the existence of the presidential decree and had not been informed of its suspension. “I myself hesitated between giving back my decoration and suspending my rights for a time, he explains. A fault is paid for, it’s normal, and I can understand that the president did not want to appear as defendant one of his own. I just regret that where some had a month to rectify their declaration to the High Authority when it was not deemed to be in conformity, mine was disclosed in the second.” The High Authority for Transparency in Public Life was created in 2013, in the wake of the Cahuzac scandal.