Knights of the Ordre national du M\u00e9rite

Pierre Tornade (21 January 1930 – 7 March 2012) was a French actor. He appeared in more than 120 films and television shows between 1956 and 1998.

Bartabas (born Clément Marty, 2 June 1957) is the performing name of a French horse trainer, film producer and impresario. He created his first theater company at age seventeen, and later founded the performing troupe, Cirque Aligre. In 1984, he founded the equestrian performing show, Zingaro, which means "Gypsy". The name was taken from the name of his first horse, a spectacular Friesian horse who was also the star of his shows.
He also produced two movies: Mazeppa (1993) and Chamane (1995), both of which featured spectacular equestrian action. Mazeppa was entered into the 1993 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Technical Grand Prize.Though he is not a household name in the United States, among those who know horses he is considered one of the most talented trainers currently living [1]. In Japan, he is well known for his performances which blend equine acrobatics and explosive pyrotechnics. In 2002, he founded the Académie du Spectacle Équestre (Academy of Equestrian Arts) [2] in the Grande Ecurie of the Palace of Versailles.

Jean-Luc Romero (born 30 June 1959) is a French politician, writer and NGO leader.

Daniel Roche (26 July 1935 – 19 February 2023) was a French social and cultural historian, widely recognized as one of the foremost experts of his generation on the cultural history of France during the later years of the Ancien Régime. Roche was elected an International member of the American Philosophical Society in 2009.

Évelyne Bouix (French: [bwiks]; born 22 April 1953) is a French film actress and stage actress. She has appeared in 61 films since 1970.
She was made Chevalier (Knight) of the Ordre national du Mérite in 1999.

William Leymergie (born 4 February 1947 in Libourne) is a French journalist television producer and host, best known for the French breakfast television news show Télématin, broadcast on public broadcaster France 2 and TV5 in Canada.

Christophe Hondelatte (born 17 December 1962) is a French television and radio host who has worked for BFMTV since fall 2014.In 1984, Hondelatte graduated from the Institute of Political Studies of Bordeaux.Between 1985 and 1988, Hondelatte worked for several Radio France stations. He left public service in 1990 to present for RTL, which he quit on 15 May 2012. He was the host of France 2's Faites entrer l'accusé.
Hondelatte and BFMTV colleague Jean-Jacques Bourdin have been described as a "duo of shock".

Azouz Begag (Arabic: عزوز بقاق) (born 5 February 1957) is a French writer, politician and researcher in economics and sociology at the CNRS. He was the delegate minister for equal opportunities of France in the government of French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) till 5 April 2007. He resigned to support the moderate centrist candidate François Bayrou, one of the two UMP ministers to do so.
Before becoming minister, Begag was decorated and made Chevalier de l’Ordre national du Mérite and Knight of the Legion of Honor.

Georges Nguyen Van Loc (2 April 1933 – 7 December 2008) was a French policeman, actor, and author.
Van Loc worked as a policeman, police inspector and commissioner in his native Marseille for many years. He later wrote an autobiography about his career as a police officer and played himself in a television series based on his life. He created the first GIPN. He was nicknamed "le Chinois" ("the Chinese") despite his Vietnamese descent.

Jérôme Champagne (born June 15, 1958) is a former French diplomat. He served from 1983 to 1998, and then became a consultant in international football, serving as an executive at FIFA from 1999 to 2010.
He transitioned from diplomacy to football as a result of the 1998 FIFA World Cup, where he was diplomatic advisor and chief of protocol of the French organizing committee. He then joined FIFA where he successively held the positions of international adviser to the president (1999–2002), deputy secretary general (2002–05), delegate of the president (2005–07) and finally director of international relations (2007–10) during the terms of President Sepp Blatter.
He left FIFA in 2010 and became football commissioner for the World Festival of Black Arts in Dakar (2010) and an adviser to the Palestinian Football Federation (PFA) and the Palestine Olympic Committee (POC), the Football Federation of Kosovo, the Cyprus Turkish Football Federation (CTFA) and finally the Congolese football club TP Mazembe of Lubumbashi.
Champagne was twice a candidate to replace Blatter in FIFA's presidency elections of 2015 and 2016. However, each time he failed to secure enough support.