Kenneth Glad
An old decree has returned to public attention after generations of neglect. The vote has renewed questions about recognition, history and the duties of the state.
The French National Assembly has voted to repeal the Code Noir, the 1685 decree signed by Louis XIV to regulate slavery in French colonies.
The vote passed 254-0, according to The Guardian. Although slavery was abolished in 1848, the text had never been formally repealed.
The measure now moves to the Senate for final approval. Its significance was largely symbolic rather than immediate legal change.
Overseas MPs led the debate
The debate was shaped by representatives from Martinique and Guadeloupe, territories where the memory of enslavement remains part of family history and public life.
Steevy Gustave, an MP from Martinique, said: “No vote alone can repair centuries of shattered lives.”
Max Mathiasin, the Guadeloupe MP who brought the proposal, said the repeal restored dignity to ancestors denied humanity under French colonial rule, the British newspaper reports.
President Emmanuel Macron said the Code Noir “should never have survived the abolition of slavery.”
Speaking about reparations, he said: “How to repair … is a question that must not be refused.” He also warned that France “must not make false promises.”
AP writes that the code defined enslaved people as property and imposed punishments for escape or resistance.
France transported about 1.4 million Africans to its colonies.
French territories face lasting gaps
The current vote does not directly concern Haiti, but the country remains central to the wider debate over France’s colonial past.
Formerly Saint-Domingue, Haiti won independence from France in 1804 after a revolt by enslaved people. France later forced the new state to compensate former slaveholders, and the debt was not fully repaid until 1947.
That history has made reparations a sharper issue than symbolism alone. It also explains why Macron’s choice to use the word has drawn attention.
The repeal has also drawn attention to conditions in French overseas territories.
Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana and Réunion remain among France’s poorer territories, with unemployment almost double the mainland rate and many households below the national poverty line.
Pierre-Yves Bocquet, of France’s Foundation for the Remembrance of Slavery, told The Guardian that the Code Noir helped create a system in which full republican equality was not applied to everyone under French rule.
The immediate next step is in the Senate. The larger question is whether France will move from formal repeal toward defined reparatory measures, especially for overseas territories and Haiti.
Sources: The Guardian, AP.
