On Thursday, May 28, 2026, the National Assembly unanimously passed the bill to repeal the Code Noir. Several media outlets immediately ran headlines referring to the text as «repealed.» This characterization is premature: as long as the bill has not completed its entire legislative process and has not been enacted, the Code Noir remains, from a strictly legal standpoint, in force.
It is a powerful gesture and a significant symbol. On Thursday, May 28, 2026, the 254 members of parliament present in the chamber, representing all political groups, approved the bill repealing the Code Noir, as well as all laws that had regulated slavery in the French colonies. Sponsored by Max Mathiasin, a member of the National Assembly from Guadeloupe representing the “Liberty, Independents, Overseas Territories, and Regions” (LIOT) group, the bill was scheduled for debate on the day set aside for that group. It had already been unanimously adopted the previous week by the Committee on Laws.
The *Code Noir* referred to in the text is this collection of royal edicts, beginning with the ordinance of March 1685 known as the «King’s Edict on the Slaves of the American Islands,» drafted under Louis XIV and attributed to Jean-Baptiste Colbert. These provisions classified enslaved persons as «movable property,» comparable to goods, and established a system of corporal punishment of extreme violence. A fact largely unknown to the general public: these texts were never formally repealed after the abolition of slavery in 1848. It is this legal loophole that lawmakers now intend to close.
«The National Assembly voted to repeal the Code Noir on first reading. It has not yet repealed the Code Noir.»
Why Referring to a «Repealed» Text Is a Misuse of Language
This is where strict adherence to the law is required. Under French law, a vote in a single chamber is not sufficient to enact a law. The National Assembly has passed the bill on first reading. The bill must now be sent to the Senate. At this stage, therefore, it is not yet a legally effective repeal, but rather an important step in the legislative process.
Catherine Conconne, Senator from Martinique, who was elected Secretary of the Senate, made this point very clear:
«No, the Code Noir has not been repealed. The vote to repeal it passed in the National Assembly. The legislative process is far from over.»
What happens next is now up to the Senate. If the Senate passes the bill in the same form as the National Assembly, this is referred to as “adoption without amendment”: the bill is then definitively adopted by Parliament. It must then be signed into law by the President of the Republic for the repeal to take legal effect.
On the other hand, if the Senate amends the bill, it is not adopted as is. In that case, a Joint Committee may be convened. This Joint Committee, composed of seven members of the National Assembly and seven senators, is tasked with drafting a compromise bill acceptable to both chambers. If an agreement is reached, this compromise bill is submitted to the National Assembly and the Senate. If it is adopted, the legislative process is complete.
But if the joint committee fails, or if the compromise it proposes is not adopted, the bill will then go back to parliamentary shuttle* between the two chambers. In other words, it returns for a new reading before the National Assembly and then before the Senate, until a legislative solution is reached. As a last resort, in accordance with the procedure set forth in the Constitution, the National Assembly may be called upon to make a final decision.
*The parliamentary shuttle process thus refers to the back-and-forth movement of a bill between the National Assembly and the Senate when it has not been adopted in identical terms by both chambers. The Joint Committee, on the other hand, serves as a means of reaching a compromise when the two chambers are unable to agree on a single version.
Only at the end of this process—after final adoption and subsequent promulgation by the President of the Republic—will the Code Noir be legally repealed. Until then, writing or saying that «the Code Noir has been repealed» amounts to confusing a step—admittedly a decisive one—with the final outcome of the process.
THE RIGHT WORD
Voting to repeal something does not mean it has been repealed. The National Assembly has adopted the bill on first reading. The Code Noir will not be legally repealed until it has been definitively adopted by Parliament and then promulgated. To write that it has already been repealed is therefore a misrepresentation.
The exact wording is important. The National Assembly voted to repeal the Code Noir on first reading. It did not, on its own, repeal the Code Noir. For the media, this nuance is by no means a mere detail: it distinguishes verified information from approximation, and it acknowledges the reality of a process that even the bill’s sponsors themselves know is incomplete.
A vote that reopens the debate on reparations
Beyond the procedural aspects, this vote takes place against a sensitive political backdrop. Debates on the floor of the National Assembly focused on the legacy of slavery and colonization, as well as on the persistent inequalities between the overseas territories and mainland France. Several lawmakers noted that the discussion was taking place just a few meters from a statue of Colbert, erected in front of the Palais-Bourbon.
The bill also calls for the government to submit a report on colonial law and its long-term effects, particularly with regard to racism and the role of the history of slavery in school curricula.
The previous week, French President Emmanuel Macron had expressed his support for the initiative, arguing that the symbolic retention of these provisions in the law constituted a betrayal of the Republic’s values. Several voices, including those of the International Movement for Reparations, however, deemed the approach insufficient, seeing it as the beginning of a much broader debate on reparations owed to the descendants of enslaved people.
Still, for now, the bottom line can be summed up in one sentence: a symbolic milestone has been reached, but the legislative process continues. The ball is now in the Senate’s court.
