Racist insults targeting public officials, including town hall staff, are punishable<\/a>\u00a0under French law by up to five years in prison and a \u20ac75,000 fine.<\/p>\n Bagayoko has promised to “create the conditions to be able to bring the perpetrators to justice” \u2013 not least because staff at the town hall reflect the area’s ethnic diversity.<\/p>\n New Saint-Denis mayor sues TV channel CNews over racist comments<\/a><\/p>\n Born in France to Malian parents, Bagayoko has filed a criminal complaint <\/a>against the CNews TV channel, after it broadcast interviews in which guests drew analogies involving monkeys, apes and tribal chiefs.<\/p>\n Paris prosecutors too have opened an investigation into “public insults of a racist nature” over some of the remarks, with a separate\u00a0probe opened into racist abuse the mayor received on social media platform X following the CNews broadcast.<\/p>\n The channel has said the remarks were ‘taken out of context” and\u00a0\u201cdeliberately distorted\u201d and the\u00a0contributor concerned has denied racist intent.<\/p>\n But the Bagayoko case has once again prompted questions about the effectiveness of France\u2019s efforts to combat discrimination.<\/p>\n Official figures<\/a> show more than 16,400 racist, xenophobic or anti-religious offences were recorded in France in 2025, including 9,700 crimes and misdemeanours \u2013 a 5 percent increase on the previous year.<\/p>\n ‘Old colonial fears’ <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing the expression of a form of racism that has become increasingly overt in recent months,\u201d says Dominique Sopo, president of anti-racism organisation SOS Racisme, pointing to \u201clevels of expression we thought had almost disappeared\u201d.<\/p>\n Bagayoko has come under attack in large part due to his position as a figure of authority, Sopo says.<\/p>\n “It\u2019s not just someone who happens to be seen as black \u2013 he’s a black person in a position of power. And that\u2019s what upsets people.”<\/p>\n Bagayoko has spoken publicly about discrimination and police violence and plans to gradually disarm the municipal police. This has led to him becoming the focus of a “highly fantasised narrative”, according to Sopo.<\/p>\n “He’s seen as embodying a threatening ‘mass’, echoing old colonial fears,” he notes, adding that such narratives are no longer confined to the far right but are being “picked up in mainstream media, treated almost as plausible, which reveals a deeply ingrained racist imagination”.<\/p>\n The Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples (MRAP<\/a>) has also filed an official complaint against CNews. Its co-president, lawyer Kaltoum Gachi, says the case shows “the normalisation of racist expression” which “no longer has limits”.<\/p>\n In addition to the targeting of elected officials, she points to a recent wave of racist abuse directed at a newborn child named Za\u00efd at the start of the year, who was described in online posts as a “terrorist migrant” and a “delinquent”.<\/p>\n “It shows how widespread and unchecked racism has become,” said Gachi.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bally Bagayoko is seen as a threat, says Dominique Sopo. AFP – JULIEN DE ROSA <\/p>\n Far-right activists fined for racist insults against French star Aya Nakamura<\/a><\/p>\n Broad legislation <\/p>\n France has extensive legislation<\/a> criminalising racial hatred and discrimination. Victims can pursue cases through both criminal courts and civil proceedings, depending on whether the racial insults were made in public or in private.<\/p>\n Public incitement to racial hatred, racial defamation and racial insult are crimes punishable under a\u00a01972 law<\/a> by up to a year in prison and a \u20ac45,000 fine.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2013, Sophie Leclere, a candidate with the far-right National Front (now the National Rally) was convicted of public racial insult and sentenced to nine months in jail, five years ineligibility to run for public office and a \u20ac50,000 fine after sh published a Facebook post comparing black MP Christiane Taubira<\/a> to an ape.<\/p>\n The sentence was reduced on appeal to a \u20ac3,000 fine and a suspended sentence. Leclere was sacked from the party.\u00a0<\/p>\n Protection from racial discrimination in employment, services and housing is enshrined in both the French penal code and European Union directives, by which France is bound.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the country’s broadcasting regulator Arcom has the power to fine broadcasters, suspend programmes or withdraw broadcasting licences altogether.<\/p>\n It has levied fines of up to \u20ac75,000 against CNews<\/a>. Sopo describes the channel \u2013 owned by right-wing billionaire Vincent Bollor\u00e9 \u2013 as “structurally and deliberately working to legitimise racism”.<\/p>\n UN racism rapporteur warns France’s contested immigration bill is ‘unequal’<\/a><\/p>\n Ambition without action <\/p>\n In 2023, France launched a national anti-discrimination plan<\/a>, targeting racism, anti-Semitism <\/a>and discrimination linked to a person’s origins \u2013 the first time racial discrimination was explicitly framed as a priority in public policy.<\/p>\n The plan includes measures centred on training and raising awareness across public and private institutions.<\/p>\n Patrick Simon, a socio-demographer at the National Institute for Demographic Studies, said the 2023 plan “had ambitions”, but added that while training and information are important, they “are not actions that directly transform practices”.<\/p>\n He notes that the plan lacks tools, such as sanctions, and monitoring mechanisms to give it teeth.<\/p>\n MRAP contributed to the plan, and its co-president Gachi admits that while it “looked ambitious on paper, in practice it delivered very little”.<\/p>\n “There’s a clear gap between political rhetoric and concrete action, and that raises serious questions about real political will,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Simon points to deeper, longer-standing structural issues too.<\/p>\n “Policies tackling discrimination<\/a>\u00a0based on origin have been stagnating for more than 20 years, \u00a0unlike those addressing gender or disability,” he says.<\/p>\n Part of the explanation for this, he says, lies in France’s refusal to recognise ethnic minorities as legal groups, in line with its universalist principles \u2013 making discrimination tied to those origins harder to measure, let alone address.<\/p>\n “There are between zero and 10 criminal convictions for racial discrimination per year, across all sectors,”says Sopo. “That says it all.”<\/p>\n French state ordered to pay man over discriminatory police ID check<\/a><\/p>\n ‘Racism is not an opinion’ <\/p>\n Calling for more decisive intervention within institutions \u2013 employers, housing agencies, public services \u2013 where racial discrimination occurs, Simon says training initiatives alone are unlikely to tackle racism.<\/p>\n “You have to act on the mechanisms, the decision-making chains. Frankly, I’m not very optimistic.”<\/p>\n He also warns that growing numbers of non-white individuals in positions of power is itself generating a backlash that is “likely to intensify”.<\/p>\n France has introduced quotas in the workplace regarding\u00a0gender<\/a>\u00a0and disability, but its constitution forbids a quota system for hiring people from ethnic minorities.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gachi is not convinced quotas are part of the solution. “The priority is to enforce existing laws more effectively,” she says. “Racism<\/a> is not an opinion, it\u2019s a criminal offence. The law must be applied and prosecutors must take up these cases.”<\/p>\n![\"Bally](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/000-87RW8QF.jpg\")
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