Overview
- Law declares listed colonial practices—including nuclear tests, extrajudicial killings, widespread torture and systematic pillage—imprescriptible and places legal responsibility on the French state.
- Text instructs authorities to seek official apologies, comprehensive reparations, restitution of transferred goods and archives, and decontamination of 17 Sahara nuclear test sites conducted from 1960 to 1966.
- The statute introduces domestic penalties for praising colonisation or denying it as a crime, including prison sentences and suspension of civil and political rights.
- Deputies passed the five‑chapter, 27‑article law unanimously, with a public display of national symbolism in the chamber.
- France’s foreign ministry labeled the move “manifestly hostile,” while experts note the law has no international legal effect and is primarily symbolic in external terms.