Nicolas Sarkozy’s jail sentence shocks France’s political class

FOR MUCH of France’s Fifth Republic, the modern state established by Charles de Gaulle in 1958, criminal cases against elected politicians have often failed either to reach court or to end in a conviction, let alone a prison sentence. On March 1st a Paris court took a step closer to ending an era of impunity. It found Nicolas Sarkozy, a centre-right president from 2007 to 2012, guilty of corruption and influence-peddling. He was sentenced to three years in prison, two of them suspended.The decision has sent a shockwave through the French political class. This is the first time an ex-president has been handed an irreducible prison sentence. In 2011 Jacques Chirac, another centre-right former president, was handed a two-year suspended sentence for the misuse of public funds, dating to his time as mayor of Paris in the 1990s. Mr Sarkozy has denied all the allegations, and has appealed.