The French parliament has ratified an amendment to add consent to the legal definition of sexual assault and rape.
Previously, rape or sexual abuse in France had been defined as “any form of sexual penetration committed with the use of violence, coercion, threat or surprise”.
Now, the law will say that all sexual acts done to another without consent constitute rape.
The change is the result of a cross-party, years-long debate which gained renewed urgency after last year’s Pelicot rape trial, in which 50 men were found guilty of sexually assaulting or raping Gisèle Pelicot while she had been drugged unconscious by her husband Dominique.
The defence of many of the accused hinged on the fact they could not be guilty of rape because they were unaware Ms Pelicot was not in a position to give her consent.
Some defence lawyers in the Pelicot case had therefore argued that there could be no crime without the intention to commit it.
The new bill will make this argument more tenuous, as it says that consent must be “free and informed, specific, prior and revocable”.
Consent will have to be evaluated according to the circumstances, the new law says, noting that it cannot be inferred from “silence or lack of reaction”.
“There is no consent if the sexual act is committed through violence, coercion, threat or surprise, whatever their nature,” it states.
The two MPs who drafted the amendment – the Greens’ Marie-Charlotte Garin and centrist Véronique Riotton – said a “historic victory” had been achieved and hailed “a major step forward in the fight against sexual violence”.
Some critics of the amendment had argued it would result in sexual relations turning into “contracts”. Others were concerned that the changes could force victims of rape to prove they had not consented.
But France’s highest administrative court, the Council of State (Conseil d’État) said in March that it was backing the amendment, saying that it would “clearly express… that sexual assaults infringe upon the fundamental principle of everyone’s personal and sexual freedom”.
An initial version was adopted by the National Assembly in April. Its progression was delayed by France’s current political turmoil, but on Wednesday the Senate definitively adopted the bill, with 327 votes in favour and 15 abstentions. It then went back to parliament, which gave it final approval.
Last year Greens senator Mélanie Vogel argued that while society had “already accepted the fact that the difference between sex and rape is consent” but that criminal law had not kept up.
“This is a historic step forward, following in the footsteps of several other European countries,” Lola Schulmann, advocacy officer at Amnesty International France, told AFP on Wednesday.
Sweden, Germany and Spain are among the European countries that already have consent-based rape laws.
