PARIS — France’s National Assembly voted 254-0 to adopt a bill repealing Code Noir, a 1685 legal code that institutionalized slavery in French colonies. The unanimous vote formally removes the code from France’s legal framework more than 175 years after slavery was abolished in 1848.

Code Noir was signed by King Louis XIV at Versailles Palace in 1685 to set the rules for slavery across France’s colonial empire. Its 60 articles first governed Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Saint-Domingue—today’s Haiti—and were later extended to French Guiana, Louisiana, and the Indian Ocean islands of Réunion and Mauritius. Article 44 defined enslaved people as “movable property,” allowing them to be bought, sold, mortgaged, or bequeathed like land or furniture. Article 38 mandated that for a first escape attempt, an enslaved person’s ears were cut off and one shoulder branded with a fleur-de-lis; for a second attempt, a leg tendon was cut and they were branded again; for a third attempt, they were executed. Article 33 ordered death for any enslaved person who struck a master, the master’s wife, or their children hard enough to leave a mark or draw blood, or who struck them in the face.

President Emmanuel Macron said Code Noir’s 60 articles “should never have survived the abolition of slavery” in the 19th century. He added, “The silence, even the indifference, that we have maintained for nearly two centuries toward this Black Code is no longer an oversight. It has become a form of offense.” Macron did not issue an apology for slavery, consistent with past French presidents.

Max Mathiasin, a French lawmaker from Guadeloupe, proposed the repeal after discovering the code had never been formally annulled. “As the great-great-grandson of people who were enslaved, I had never been able to read it in full. This was made by human beings — against human beings,” Mathiasin said. He described the vote as “a way of restoring our ancestors, restoring our humanity” and “living up to the Republican promise” of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

Pierre-Yves Bocquet, deputy director of the Foundation for the Memory of Slavery, called Code Noir the origin of France’s “colonial exception,” the principle that republican rights could be suspended for colonized people. “Even today, we accept that people in the overseas territories can have fewer rights than in mainland France,” Bocquet said.

Although France abolished slavery in 1848 and later integrated its former colonies as overseas departments, disparities persist. The overseas territories remain among France’s poorest, with unemployment roughly double the mainland rate. Historians note that while some articles of Code Noir appeared to offer protections—such as requiring food and clothing—those provisions were widely ignored, and enslavers who killed enslaved people were almost never punished.