The 2024 snap parliamentary elections denied President Macron a majority support in the National Assembly leading to the collapse of four governments. Post-election political instability continued in 2025 with increasing political polarization and large popular protests over social and fiscal inequality. The country faced a deepening crisis of trust in its democratic institutions and a shrinking civil society space. The government’s use of administrative powers to dissolve nongovernmental groups threatened the rule of law. Police repression of protests restricted freedoms of expression and association. Discrimination against minorities persisted amid high rates of hate crimes. Migrants and asylum seekers faced an increasingly unwelcoming environment.

Rule of Law

In December, CIVICUS, a nongovernmental group assessing civic freedoms globally, downgraded France’s civic space from “narrowed” to “obstructed.”

France’s 2021 “separatism” law continued to negatively impact rights. A June report by the European Civic forum, noted that the law’s “Contract of Republican Engagement,” requiring organizations to commit to secularism and republican values in exchange for public subsidies, acts as a “lever for restricting freedom of association and expression.”

In April, the Minister of Interior initiated dissolution procedures for Urgence Palestine, a leading pro-Palestinian solidarity organization, Lyon Populaire (an ultra-right group), and Jeune Garde (an anti-fascist group). While the latter two were dissolved by decree in June, at this writing, Urgence Palestine’s dissolution had not been confirmed.

In its 2025 report on the rule of law in Europe covering 2024 events, the NGO Liberties noted that both the law on algorithmic surveillance, passed under the pretext of the 2024 Olympics to prevent foreign interference, and the “separatism law,” restricted freedoms of expression and association, and the rights to privacy and to non-discrimination.

While a new law on drug trafficking was passed without a provision that would have drastically affected end-to-end encryption and privacy rights, it still gives police invasive new surveillance powers.

Press freedom groups condemned police violence against journalists, while covering protests. Liberties noted a decline in press freedom exacerbated by media concentration.

Attacks on the judiciary spiked after Marine Le Pen’s March conviction and five-year ban on public office and former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s September conviction to five years in prison for criminal conspiracy to use illegally Libyan funds for his 2007 campaign. Authorities launched investigations into death threats against the judge in Sarkozy’s trial.

Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights

In January, Oxfam France reported that the wealthiest 10 percent of the population holds nearly two-thirds of the national wealth, while the standard of living for the remaining 90 percent has stagnated or decreased. A report from France’s National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies, published in July 2025, revealed that the poverty rate in 2023 reached its highest level since 1996, affecting 15.4 percent of the population.

The Housing Foundation warned in February that France is “sinking into a housing crisis,” with 350,000 people homeless in 2024.

Discrimination and Intolerance

Official data published in 2025, showed a high level of recorded racist, antisemitic, xenophobic, or anti-religious offenses in 2024 (9,350 recorded acts), an 11 percent increase from 2023 (8,428 recorded acts). Anti-Muslim acts decreased by 29 percent, while other racist and xenophobic acts increased by 15 percent. Between January and June, antisemitic acts decreased by 27.5 percent compared to the same period in 2024, but remained more than twice as high as in the first half of 2023, before the start of the war in Gaza. The National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH) noted that underreporting remains a serious problem.

In its concluding observations on France, the UN Committee Against Torture (UN CAT) expressed deep concern over numerous allegations of excessive force and ill-treatment by law enforcement, which disproportionately affect individuals of African and Arab descent and non-nationals.

In a landmark ruling, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) condemned France for racial profiling for repeated identity checks by the police with no “objective and reasonable justification” of a Black French national. The court rejected the claims of five other French nationals and failed to address the systemic nature of racial profiling by the police in France.

A report by the Defender of Rights found young men perceived as Arab, Black, or North African are four times more likely to be stopped by the police. A study, supported by the Defender of Rights, found police practices of repeated checks and “multi-fining” targeting young racialized men from working-class neighborhoods were discriminatory. A report by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance called for the establishment of a monitoring database for police checks.

SOS Homophobie’s annual report published at the start of 2025 revealed a 57 percent increase in physical assaults against LGBT people in 2024 compared to 2023.

Asylum Seekers and Migrants

In August, France and the UK launched a pilot “one in, one out” migration deal, under which France should take back one person who traveled irregularly by boat to the UK for each asylum seeker the UK accepts to take from France. Migrant rights groups condemned the deal as dehumanizing and opaque. At time of writing, dozens had been “exchanged” under the agreement.

The UN CAT, in its concluding observations on France, expressed concern about frequent illegal pushbacks of asylum seekers and migrants on the French-Italian border, including unaccompanied children, denying them access to asylum in France.

In August, the government suspended a program that had brought 292 Palestinians from Gaza to France since January after authorities launched an investigation into one of the evacuees for “apology for terrorism” because of antisemitic messages shared on social media. Rights and lawyers’ associations lodged a complaint arguing the decision violates the rights to life, human dignity, and family unity. France reportedly resumed evacuations of Palestinians from Gaza in October.

In June, the Interior Minister deployed over 4,000 police, gendarmes, and military personnel for two days to conduct identity checks targeting migrants in train stations and buses. Migrant rights groups condemned these operations as stigmatizing roundups.

Children’s Rights

UNICEF and the Federation of Solidarity Actors (FAS) reported that more than 2,100 children slept on the streets in 2025, up 6 percent from 2024 and 30 percent from 2022.

Many children in the overseas department of Mayotte were denied access to education amid a lack of infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages, and the absence of school canteens and after-school activities. Thousands remain excluded from school.

UN CAT expressed concern that asylum-seeker children, including unaccompanied children, are frequently detained with unrelated adults in border waiting areas, increasing the risk of abuse. It found it troubling that the application of a nationwide ban on detention of migrant children, adopted in 2024, has been postponed until January 2027 in Mayotte, where a large number of children are reportedly held in detention centers without proper safeguards. In October the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child concluded France is responsible for grave and systematic violations of the rights of unaccompanied migrant children.

In September, France repatriated three women and ten children detained in Syria camps, the first such operation since July 2023. This brought the total number of children repatriated since 2019 to 179. Lawyers for the families warned that 110 French children and around 50 French women are still arbitrarily detained in “appalling conditions” in violation of France’s obligations.

Women and Girls’ Rights

The 2025 report from the High Council for Equality highlighted an increase in sexist gender stereotypes in media and rising gender-based violence, while also noting persistent inequality between women and men in education and professional life.

The ECtHR condemned France twice for failing to effectively prevent non-consensual sexual acts. In October, Parliament adopted a bill defining rape as sex without consent. The former definition required use of violence, coercion, threat, or surprise.

International Justice

In January, French judges issued a new arrest warrant for former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for complicity in war crimes; the Court of Cassation annulled in July a separate 2023 warrant based on the principle of personal immunity for heads of state. Since then, judges issued two arrest warrants against Assad—one in August for complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in 2012, and another in October for chemical weapons attacks in 2013.

The trial of Roger Lumbala Tshitenga for crimes against humanity allegedly committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2002 and 2003 started in November.