France Votes to Repeal Colonial-Era ‘Code Noir’ Slavery Law France’s decision to finally strike the 17th‑century Code Noir from its legal corpus exposes a stark tension: is this a meaningful break with a slaveholding past, or a largely symbolic correction made nearly two centuries too late?

On the conservative-leaning side, coverage stresses the drama and emotion of the moment while framing it as the tidy closure of a long‑ignored anomaly. The Washington Times highlights the spectacle of “tears and history in the chamber” as parliament voted to erase a “slavery-era Black Code” from the books, underscoring the act as a cleansing of a dark but already distant chapter. The emphasis falls on institutional solemnity and unity rather than on the structural legacies of slavery or contemporary policy obligations.

Liberal coverage, by contrast, situates the move within an unfinished reckoning with colonialism and racism. The Guardian notes that for “almost 180 years after France abolished slavery, the Code Noir (Black Code) allowing enslaved humans to be treated as property and worked, beaten, sold, raped or killed, remained in place,” and highlights that the unanimous 254–0 vote is a “rare show of political unity” in a “bitterly divided” assembly. Its account dwells on the brutality codified in law—Article 44’s declaration that a person was “movable property,” and clauses permitting mutilation of runaways and voiding the testimony of enslaved people.

The liberal narrative also foregrounds President Emmanuel Macron’s argument that the Code Noir “should never have survived the abolition of slavery” and that official silence had become “a form of offence,” tying repeal to potential debates on reparations that France “must not refuse” even if it “must not make false promises.” Conservative reporting, at least in this sample, sidesteps reparations and long-term policy, preferring to present a cathartic, self-contained parliamentary gesture.

Both perspectives agree on the vote’s symbolic weight and the emotional scenes in the chamber. Where they diverge is on what comes next: closure versus the opening of a deeper, and potentially more contentious, historical and political ledger.