France was rocked by protests on Sunday against proposed legislation that would grant additional protections to law enforcement officials using firearms in the line of duty. The new law, which critics say will grant police officers a "licence to kill", comes amid mounting allegations of police brutality in recent years, particularly against immigrant communities in the banlieues – outlying suburbs – of Paris and other major cities. Thousands of people marched in France over the weekend against the proposed law which would grant armed police and gendarmes the presumption of self-defence if they use their weapons while carrying out their duties.
This means that complainants against police brutality would have to prove that a police officer was not acting in self-defence. A petition against the bill lodged by Issam El Khalfaoui, whose son was shot dead by a police officer in 2021, on the website of the National Assembly, gathered 730,000 signatures earlier in the year, but a parliamentary law committee dismissed it in July. Thousands of people marched in the French capital Paris over the weekend while many other protests were organised in cities across France. Police said about 8,200 people demonstrated in the southern French cities of Lyon and Toulouse alone. Protests were also held in Marseille, southern France, and Rennes, in the country's northwest, where officials said eight people were arrested and three police officers were injured when projectiles were thrown at them. Left-wing politicians, rights groups including Amnesty International, France's magistrates' union and the country's League of Human Rights also participated in the protests.
Draft bill 691 aims to establish a presumption of legitimate self-defence or of legality for law enforcement officials when they use their firearms in the line of duty. In other words, the proposition would mean that officers who killed someone in a shooting incident would be presumed to have acted within the limits of the law, unless there was proof to the contrary. The text says the presumption of self-defence "may be rebutted if the judicial investigation demonstrates that the use of weapons was manifestly disproportionate or contrary to the principle of absolute necessity established by law". Deputies in the National Assembly approved the bill in July. A vote on the proposed legislation will now take place in the Senate, the upper house of the French parliament.
A longstanding demand of France's far-right National Rally party, the legislation was proposed by Member of Parliament Eric Pauget, from France's right-wing Les Republicains (LR) party. Proponents of the law, including French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez, say it is an important legal measure, required to protect police officers working in dangerous conditions, particularly when tackling organised crime. Nunez told the French parliament in July that "it does not lead to penal irresponsibility – at any moment, if the circumstances are reunited, any prosecutor can reverse this presumption". But critics say the measure amounts to a "licence to kill".
Mathilde Panot, president of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party, condemned the bill, saying "the police kill already". Addressing crowds in Paris during Sunday's protest, she said, "In the Republic there can be no organised police impunity. In the Republic, there cannot be a category of citizens who have the right of life or death over other citizens." Pouria Amirshahi, a left-wing lawmaker representing French residents overseas, also condemned the bill. "There will be more deaths – if you authorise someone to use their firearm with the idea that they won't be accountable, then they will just shoot," said Amirshahi. "This law grants police impunity." Amnesty International's Cedric Picard, who took part in the Marseille protest, said, "We are afraid police violence would only grow with this law."
The United Nations has condemned the proposed law, saying it could "legitimise and normalise" violence against civilians. "The duty to investigate every potentially unlawful killing rests with the State," said Morris Tidball-Binz, United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. "It cannot be displaced, in law or in practice, by requiring victims or their families to rebut a legal presumption that the use of potentially lethal force was lawful before the facts have been independently established." Tidball-Binz said that if the proposed legislation is adopted, it would violate Principle 9 of the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, which mandates strict limits on the use of lethal force. Marie-Laure Geoffray, also of Amnesty International, echoed Tidball-Binz's statement in July, saying that the law would slow down investigations into police violence, as the burden of proof would fall on the victims or their families rather than on the police.
Critics have warned the new law could trigger a rise in fatal shootings and a sharp decline in public trust in the police. Pauget, the MP who put the bill forward, said Italy's anti-protest law is similar in nature. Proposed by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's far-right wing government and adopted in June 2025, the law introduced harsher penalties for protest-related offences, including property damage and sit-ins deemed disruptive, and granted broader powers to law enforcement officers. It also allowed intelligence agents to commit certain "crimes" for national security purposes without facing prosecution. That law similarly prompted widespread demonstrations across Italy, with human rights organisations accusing the government of criminalising dissent, limiting civil liberties and restricting the right to protest.
The French government has come under pressure from activists and the public over repeated allegations of police violence and harassment, largely against Black and Arab men and boys in the suburbs (banlieues) of Paris and other major cities in France in recent years. Furthermore, the number of fatal shootings by police in France is among the highest in Europe and continues to rise. The agencies that carry out investigations of police in France – the IGPN and IGGN – recorded 69 people killed by police or gendarmerie officers in 2024, compared with 49 in 2023 and 50 in 2022. Below are some of the most high-profile incidents across the country over the past decade.
Source: www.aljazeera.com