French Lawmakers Vote to Give Police Officers Benefit of Doubt in Shootings

Eric Pauget, the conservative lawmaker who proposed the bill, said, ‘The time for words has given way to the time for truth.’

A woman walks past a car, burnt during nights of unrest following the death of a teenager killed by a French police officer in Nanterre during a traffic stop, at Saint-Eloy neighborhood in Woippy, Metz, France, on July 5, 2023. Horaci Garcia/Reuters

The lower house of the French parliament approved a law on July 7 that would give the benefit of the doubt to police officers involved in shootings in the course of their duties.

The bill—which was approved by 313 votes to 199 in the lower house of the National Assembly—would mean investigating magistrates would have to assume police officers who fatally shot someone were acting within the law, unless there was evidence to prove otherwise.

The French government, led by President Emmanuel Macron, has lent its support to the law, which has to be approved by the upper house in order to become law.

Interior minister Laurent Nunez said it was an important protection for police officers engaged in tackling organized crime, but critics fear it is a “license to kill.”

“It does not lead to penal irresponsibility,” Nunez told the National Assembly, who said prosecutors would be entitled to reverse the presumption of innocence if they came across evidence of wrongdoing by officers.

The bill was proposed by Eric Pauget, a lawmaker from the conservative Les Républicains party.

In a July 7 post on X, Pauget said the bills had been adopted by the lower house.

‘Time for Truth’

“For far too long, we have paid tribute,” Pauget wrote. “We have saluted courage. We have observed minutes of silence. Today, the time for words has given way to the time for truth.”

In June 2023, there were three nights of rioting in several French cities after a police officer fatally shot Nahel Merzouk, 17, during a traffic stop in Nanterre, on the western outskirts of Paris.

Footage of the incident, which went viral, shows Nahel initially failing to stop as he drives a yellow Mercedes car in a bus lane. Two police officers catch up with the car a few yards further on, after it’s held up in traffic, and one of them then shoots him through the windscreen as he tries to drive away.

In March 2026, Le Monde newspaper reported that an appeals court had decided that the officer, identified only as Florian M., should face a criminal trial on a charge of police brutality, rather than murder or manslaughter.

A law passed in 2017, called L.435-1, allowed police officers to use their guns if they were unable to stop a car or scooter, which allegedly led to a rise in fatal police shootings involving moving vehicles.

Stop Aux Violences d’Etat (Stop State Violence), a nonprofit, has demanded L.435-1 be repealed, and argued officers should only be allowed to fire in cases of self-defense.

Pouria Amirshahi, a lawmaker who represents the progressive Ecologists party, spoke out against the proposed new law on July 7.

Police Given ‘Impunity’

“There will be more deaths if you authorize someone to use their firearm with the idea that they won’t be accountable, then they will just shoot,” Amirshahi said. “This law grants police impunity.”

More than 360,000 people have signed a petition on the National Assembly website against the law. The petition was proposed by Issam El Khalfaoui, whose 19-year-old son Souheil was fatally shot by police at a traffic stop in Marseille in 2021.

A man holds flowers at Notre-Dame de Toutes-Aides high school the day after a knife attack in which one student was killed and three others wounded in Nantes, France, on April 25, 2025. Loic Venance / AFP via Getty Images

Another petition, supported by the Alliance Police Nationale trade union, in favor of the law has been signed by more than 40,000 people.

In a statement, the Alliance Police Nationale said the law was needed to restore a “fair balance.”

“Today, when a police officer or gendarme uses their weapon in the course of their duties, they are too often placed, from the very first hours, in a situation of suspicion, even before the facts are fully established,” the statement said.

The agencies that investigate the police and gendarmerie in France, the IGPN and IGGN, recorded 69 people killed by law enforcement in 2024, compared with 49 in 2023 and 50 in 2022.

But at the same time, it is argued that violence by organized crime groups is on the rise.

In October 2024, a 15-year-old was stabbed and “burned alive” in Marseille, and in November 2024, another boy, also 15, was shot in the head during a shootout between gangs in the town of Poitiers.

In May 2024, two prison officers were killed and three others were seriously injured when a van carrying Mohamed Amra, a notorious criminal from Marseille, was ambushed on its way to Evreux jail.

Police officers escort French fugitive Mohamed Amra, nicknamed ''The Fly," after a court hearing at the Court of Appeals in Bucharest, Romania, on Feb. 23, 2025. Vadim Ghirda/AP

Amra was recaptured in Romania in February 2025, but nobody has been arrested or indicted over the killing of the prison officers.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally (RN) party, attended a demonstration in support of the police in January.

On July 7, an appeals court cleared the way for Le Pen to become the RN’s candidate at next year’s presidential elections.

Macron, who will have served two terms, is forbidden from standing again, and Le Pen—who stands on a law-and-order and anti-immigration platform—is currently ahead in the opinion polls, with former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe trailing some way behind.

Reuters contributed to this report.