France Votes to Repeal ‘Code Noir’ 178 Years After Abolishing Slavery

France’s Parliament has voted to formally repeal the Code Noir, the 1685 royal edict that regulated slavery in French colonies, nearly two centuries after slavery was abolished but long after the colonial code had ceased to have practical legal effect.

The French Senate approved the repeal on Tuesday, October 20, adopting without changes a bill previously passed by the National Assembly in May. The vote completes Parliament’s consideration of the measure, which can now proceed to presidential promulgation before becoming law. The legislation also recognizes the connection between colonial laws that treated enslaved people as property and the crimes against humanity constituted by the slave trade and slavery.

The Code Noir, or “Black Code”, was issued under King Louis XIV in March 1685. It established rules governing the treatment and legal status of enslaved people in France’s Caribbean colonies, including provisions that classified them as movable property and gave enslavers extensive authority over their lives. The framework also addressed religious practice, living conditions, punishment and the control of enslaved populations. Its provisions were subsequently applied or adapted in other French colonial territories.

The measure does not mark the abolition of slavery itself, which France definitively abolished in 1848. Rather, it removes a legal text that had remained formally present in the country’s legal corpus despite having become obsolete and inoperative following abolition. The gap arose because the decree ending slavery did not explicitly repeal the earlier colonial legislation.

The bill was introduced by Max Mathiasin, a lawmaker representing Guadeloupe, and received unanimous approval in the National Assembly in May. The Senate’s decision to adopt the same text without amendments avoided the need for further parliamentary negotiations. The proposal received government backing and forms part of a wider effort to clarify France’s legal record of slavery and colonial rule.

Beyond the formal repeal, the legislation requires the government, within one year of the law’s promulgation, to submit a report to Parliament identifying colonial-era provisions that may still remain in force in France’s overseas territories. The review is also expected to examine their contemporary social, economic, cultural and environmental effects, their links to discrimination and racism, and the lasting consequences of slavery for descendants of enslaved people. It will assess how the history of slavery, the slave trade and abolition is taught in schools and propose ways to strengthen education and develop places of remembrance and historical research.

The move follows France’s 2001 law recognizing the slave trade and slavery as crimes against humanity. Although the repeal is primarily symbolic in its immediate legal effect, it formally removes a colonial instrument associated with the institutionalization of slavery and opens a broader examination of whether other colonial-era provisions remain embedded in the law. For France and its overseas territories, the legislation connects the country’s historical record with continuing questions about public memory, education, discrimination and the legacy of colonial rule.