They are 547 to have received the highest French national distinctions this year. The new civilian promotion of the Legion of Honor is published Saturday 1is January to Official newspaper.
This promotion is marked not only by a concern for parity – half of the people rewarded being women – but also by the Covid-19 pandemic. Among the promotion include all the members of the scientific council, which guides the government in the management of the health crisis, as well as Mohamed Abdelatif, vice-president of the French Red Cross.
Former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn, now executive director of the Academy of the World Health Organization, has been promoted to knight of the Legion of Honor. She resigned in February 2020, to run for mayor of Paris, before being indicted in September 2021 by the Court of Justice of the Republic for “Endangering the life of others” in its management of the Covid-19 epidemic.
Many elected officials and officials rewarded
This new promotion, the last of Emmanuel Macron’s five-year term, also gives pride of place to the public sector (30% of the decorated), distinguishing in particular Bruno Lasserre, vice-president of the Council of State, as a grand officer.
Many elected officials, former elected officials or former senior officials complete the list. We find Gérard Collomb, former Minister of the Interior under Edouard Philippe, former mayor of Lyon and support of Emmanuel Macron from the start. There is also François Rebsamen, mayor of Dijon, former executive of the Socialist Party, recently appeared in a video at the Congress of Territories of Progress, a movement representing the left wing of the presidential majority. Also rewarded is Benoît Ribadeau-Dumas, chief of staff between 2017 and 2020 of Édouard Philippe, then prime minister.
Opposition or independent elected officials are also among the promotion, like Christelle Mor Anglais, president of Pays de la Loire (elected by the Republicans), recently appointed spokesperson for Valérie Pécresse. The former socialist deputy for Haute-Garonne Gérard Bapt, who denounced the Mediator scandal in 2010, was also rewarded. Last March, the Servier laboratories, producers of this drug held responsible for hundreds of deaths, were found guilty of “aggravated deception” and “unintentional homicides and injuries”.
In addition, Fleur Pellerin, former minister of culture under François Hollande, now president of the investment fund Korelya Capital, will receive the Legion of Honor, as will the deputy mayor, socialist, of Marseille Samia Ghali and Michel Fournier, unlabeled mayor of Les Voivres (Vosges) and president of the Association of rural mayors of France.
Awarded business leaders
In the economic field (nearly 30% of the decorated) are the chef Thierry Marx, who is promoted to officer, the former president of Medef Pierre Gattaz, as well as the boss of Free and individual shareholder of the World Xavier Niel. Lawyer Jacqueline Laffont, who recently distinguished herself as a lawyer for Nicolas Sarkozy during the wiretapping trial and for Alexandre Benalla during the trial on the violence of May 1, 2018, is made a signet ring of the Legion of Honor.
Culture is not to be outdone. The composer and conductor Betsy Jolas was promoted to Commander and Pap Ndiaye, who in 2021 took over the head of the National Museum of the History of Immigration (which occupies the Palais de la Porte-Dorée, in Paris), is knighted.
With the promotion of July 14, the promotion of 1is January represents one of the two annual civil promotions of the Legion of Honor. Founded by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802, the Legion of Honor now has 92,000 members, civilians and soldiers, rewarded for their “eminent merits in the service of the nation”.