France’s Senate has voted to repeal the colonial-era Code Noir, which governed slavery in French colonies, more than 175 years after the country abolished the practice.
The Senate approved the legislation on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, following its unanimous adoption by the lower house of Parliament in May.
The measure formally removes the provisions of the Code Noir and related regulations from French law, although they had long been obsolete, New York Post reports.
The Code Noir, meaning “Black Code”, was introduced under King Louis XIV in 1685 and subsequently extended through additional regulations to other French colonial territories, including present-day Louisiana in the United States.
It governed the treatment of enslaved people, including provisions on punishment, food, religious practice and the relationship between enslaved people and their owners.
France first abolished slavery in 1794 during the French Revolution, but Napoleon Bonaparte reinstated it in French colonies in 1802.
The country abolished it for a second and final time in 1848. However, the Code Noir was never explicitly removed from the statute books.
The legislation’s proponents described the repeal as an act of historical recognition and reparative justice. Max Mathiasin, a centrist lawmaker from the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe who championed the bill, said, “Repeal is, first and foremost, a way of showing that such provisions should not exist — that such trash should not exist in French law.”
Beyond repealing the Code Noir, the legislation requires the French government to submit a report to Parliament within a year identifying provisions derived from colonial law that remain in force in overseas territories. The report is also expected to examine the contemporary effects of colonial law on economic, social, cultural and environmental development, discrimination and racism, as well as the lasting consequences for descendants of enslaved people.
The legislation also recognises that laws which institutionalised the reduction of human beings to property, organised their deportation and exploitation, and facilitated violence against them are inseparable from the crime against humanity constituted by the slave trade and slavery, already recognised under French law in 2001.
The repeal is primarily symbolic because the provisions had long ceased to have legal effect.
However, it formally removes the colonial-era regulations from the statute books and provides for further examination of the continuing legacy of colonial law in France’s overseas territories.