France votes to remove law treating enslaved people as property two centuries after slavery

French lawmakers voted unanimously on Thursday to repeal the Code Noir, a 17th century slavery code that classified enslaved Africans as property and remained formally embedded in France’s legal framework nearly 180 years after slavery was abolished.

The National Assembly approved the measure 254-0, formally moving to remove a set of royal decrees first issued under King Louis XIV in 1685 that governed slavery across French colonies in the Caribbean, South America and the Indian Ocean. Although France abolished slavery in 1848, the Code Noir was never officially repealed.

Lawmakers backing the bill said the continued presence of the text in French law contradicted the values of equality and human rights that France claims to uphold. President Emmanuel Macron recently described the long standing silence surrounding the Code Noir as “a form of offense” rather than a simple legal oversight.

The code regulated nearly every aspect of enslaved people’s lives in France’s colonial empire. Its provisions authorized corporal punishment, imposed Catholic conversion and treated enslaved people as movable property that could be bought, sold and inherited. Historians estimate more than one million Africans were deported under French colonial slavery systems governed by the text.

The vote comes as France faces renewed pressure to address the legacy of slavery and colonialism, particularly in overseas territories such as Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana and Réunion, where descendants of enslaved people have long pushed for greater recognition of the historical consequences of French colonial rule.

The legislation does not address reparations, one of the most contentious questions in France’s debate over slavery’s legacy. Some lawmakers welcomed the repeal as a long overdue symbolic step, while critics argued that removing a dormant legal text does little to address inequalities that persist in former slave territories.

France recognized slavery and the transatlantic slave trade as crimes against humanity under the Taubira law in 2001. The latest bill must still pass the Senate before becoming law.