Expanded terror offences <\/p>\n
The proposed law<\/a> would broaden the scope of two existing criminal offences: incitement to terrorism and glorification of terrorism.<\/p>\n Under current law, only “direct” incitement to terrorism is punishable, carrying a sentence of up to five years in prison and a \u20ac75,000 fine. The bill would extend that to “implicit” incitement.<\/p>\n It would also make it a criminal offence to glorify the perpetrator of a terrorist attack, not merely the act itself.<\/p>\n Most controversially, the bill creates a new offence of publicly calling for the “destruction of a state recognised by the French Republic”, punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment and a \u20ac45,000 fine.<\/p>\n “Calling for the destruction of a state recognised by the French Republic would be a criminal offence,” said Yadan, a former member of President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s Renaissance parliamentary group who quit last summer in protest after he recognised the state of Palestine<\/a>.<\/p>\n While the law itself does not single out Israel, which would have been unconstitutional, the bill\u2019s preamble states that calls for the destruction of Israel and comparisons to a Nazi regime are “taking root in people’s minds with complete impunity”.<\/p>\n Yadan insists the bill carries a universal message. “It’s not specifically about Israel. But obviously, today, there is only one country in the world whose criticism takes the form of calls for its destruction, and that’s Israel. And you have to wonder why,” she told RFI.<\/p>\n “Calling for the destruction of a country is also calling for the annihilation of a people. That\u2019s what we are targeting.”<\/p>\n Listen to this story on the Spotlight on France<\/a>\u00a0podcast:\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Spotlight on France, episode 143 \u00a9 RFI <\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n The bill also extends the existing offence of Holocaust denial to cover any “denial”, “downplaying” or “gross trivialisation” of crimes against humanity more broadly, and widens the right of anti-racist associations to bring civil proceedings.<\/p>\n An earlier draft sought to ban comparisons between Israel and the Nazi regime outright, but that provision was removed following advice from the Conseil d’Etat, France’s highest administrative court. The court also removed a reference to criminalising “denial of a state”.<\/p>\n The French parliament’s law committee passed the latest version of the bill in January by 18 votes to 14.<\/p>\n Why is France recognising Palestinian statehood and will it change anything?<\/a><\/p>\n ‘Thought policing’ <\/p>\n The legislation rests on the premise that hatred of Israel is inseparable from hatred of the Jewish people \u2013 a principle aligned with certain working definitions<\/a> of antisemitism, including that of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.<\/p>\n It has the backing of the government, centrist parties, the mainstream right and the far-right National Rally. At a meeting with Jewish organisations in February, Prime Minister S\u00e9bastien Lecornu said that “contemporary anti-Zionism has become the mask of an old antisemitism”.<\/p>\n But legal experts have raised serious objections. In a statement<\/a> inviting lawmakers to reject the bill, the Syndicate of French lawyers (SAF) said it “remains dangerous both for freedom of expression and for the fight against antisemitism”.<\/p>\n They warned of the implications of criminalising of “implicit” incitement. “By seeking to regulate what is implicit, the criminal courts would in effect be tasked with a hazardous form of thought policing,” it wrote.<\/p>\n Critics of France’s proposed antisemitism law protest outside the parliament in Paris. \u00a9 Sipa\/Arnaud Cesar Vilette <\/p>\n Fran\u00e7ois Dubuisson, a specialist in international and criminal law, argues that France’s existing legislation on glorifying terrorism has already been criticised by legal experts for being too broad.<\/p>\n Most judgments from the European Court of Human Rights say that to secure a conviction for terrorist discourse, you have to identify hate speech or incitement to commit an act of terrorism, he explains \u2013 not only glorification.<\/p>\n “So [French law] is already criticised, and now with this modification, it could [become] even broader.”<\/p>\n Dubuisson points to a recent case involving a trade unionist who was convicted for glorifying terrorism after distributing a leaflet describing the 7 October Hamas attack as a response to decades of Israeli occupation.<\/p>\n He was acquitted on appeal, Dubuisson explains, with the judge ruling the words offer political contextualisation, not glorification. Under the bill’s extended definition, “such a distinction could become harder to draw”.<\/p>\n He also believes the additional legislation is “absolutely unnecessary”, particularly in the case of calls for the destruction of the state of Israel \u2013 where existing offences including “incitement to violence, incitement to hatred towards a specific group like the Israelis, incitement to terrorism, glorification of war crimes, glorification of crimes against humanity” could all be applied, Dubuisson said.<\/p>\n He suggests the bill is designed “to create the impression that there is a new phenomena that requires a new law”.<\/p>\n “I think it\u2019s only by ideology that this bill has been built.”<\/p>\n Macron warns Netanyahu ‘the fight against antisemitism cannot be exploited’<\/a><\/p>\n Freedom of debate <\/p>\n Opponents of the bill argue that its real-world effect would be to suppress legitimate debate about Israeli government policy and the situation in Gaza \u2013 which has led UN investigators to accuse Israel of genocide<\/a>.<\/p>\n “People are going to be very afraid to talk about Palestinian rights and Israeli crimes if this law is adopted,” said\u00a0Cecile Marquerie, advocacy coordinator for\u00a0an alliance<\/a> of pro-Palestinian French NGOs.<\/p>\n She told RFI the proposed law would allow defenders of Israel “to throw lawsuits\u00a0at journalists, academics, human rights organisations and lawyers who are denouncing Israeli crimes”.<\/p>\n A phrase such as “the Israeli apartheid regime must be dismantled” \u2013 language used by major human rights organisations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch \u2013 “could very much fall within this new offence of a call for the destruction of a state”, she noted.<\/p>\n Critics also challenge the bill\u2019s premise<\/a>: that anti-Zionism is necessarily a form of antisemitism.<\/p>\n “The foundation of this bill is that hatred against Jews is inseparable from hatred against Israel. That’s identity labelling,” Marquerie argued. “It’s imposing a constrained solidarity with Israel on Jewish French citizens.<\/p>\n “Linking them to Israel is not protecting them, it’s exposing them.”<\/p>\n A petition titled “No to the Yadan Law” has gathered more than half a million signatures, the number required to oblige parliament to consider holding a debate. \u00a9 AFP – SEBASTIEN BOZON <\/p>\n The bill is scheduled for debate on 16 and 17 April. Given the centre and right-wing bloc controls more seats than the left, the bill is expected to pass.<\/p>\n But a petition<\/a> calling on MPs to reject the bill has gathered more than 500,000 signatures in recent days \u2013 meaning the National Assembly is obliged to consider holding a debate on the demand, opening the floor to lawyers and civil society groups.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a lengthy process and is unlikely to happen before the MPs’ debate, but Marquerie notes that some centrist and centre-right lawmakers have already begun to look more closely at the bill\u2019s content.<\/p>\n “The title of the law \u2013 presenting itself as a bill to combat new forms of antisemitism \u2013 is a trap,” she says. “Parliamentarians see that title and say, ‘I’m against antisemitism, so I’ll vote for it.’ They have to open the file and really look into it.”<\/p>\n Listen to this story on the Spotlight on France<\/a> podcast, episode 143<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"French lawmakers are preparing to vote on a government-backed bill that supporters say is needed to tackle\u00a0evolving forms…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4558,5,63,1446,1336,4560,1998,4559],"class_list":{"0":"post-4979","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-antisemitism","9":"tag-france","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-jewish","12":"tag-law","13":"tag-palestine","14":"tag-parliament","15":"tag-vote"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Spotlight](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/episode-spotlight-on-france-episode-143-green.png\")
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