The 65-year-old former president is accused of having tried to illegally obtain information from a senior magistrate in 2014 about an investigation involving him.
The high-profile trial of Nicolas Sarkozy, in which he is accused of trying to use his influence to find out confidential judicial information, is finally under way in Paris. But the case, the first in which a former French president has faced corruption charges, has been beset by a string of disruptions and by sometimes confusing legal disputes. The result so far, says Mediapart's legal affairs correspondent Michel Deléan, is a trial that has not yet done justice to the issues that are at stake.
Nicolas Sarkozy at the court building in Paris for his trial, November 30th 2020. © Stéphane de Sakutin/AFP