France has enshrined the definition of rape and sexual assault as any non-consensual sexual act, months after the trial of dozens of men over the rape and abuse of Gisèle Pelicot rattled the nation.
The country’s senate voted 327-0 on Wednesday in favor of the bill, with 15 abstentions. The bill was introduced in January, after 51 men were convicted for the rape of Pelicot. Consent is defined as “freely given, informed, specific, prior, and revocable” and assessed “in the light of the circumstances.” The use of violence, constraint, threat, or surprise in committing a sexual act automatically constitutes non-consent, while consent also “cannot be inferred solely from the silence or the lack of reaction of the victim.”
“When it’s no, it’s no; when it’s not no, it doesn’t mean yes, and it’s better to check,” Marie-Charlotte Garin, who proposed the bill alongside Véronique Riotton, told the National Assembly last week. “And when it’s yes, it must be a real yes, a yes that is not afraid. Giving in will never again be consenting.”
France’s criminal code previously defined rape along the lines of force, as an act of penetration or oral sex committed with “violence, coercion, threat or surprise.” It did not mention consent. The bill passed France’s lower house of parliament last week with widespread approval from most members of the National Assembly, except for members of the far right.
“Rape culture, this insidious poison that permeates our societies, must be fought by each and every one of us,” Marie-Pierre Vedrenne, a deputy interior minister, told senators ahead of the vote. “Today, we can take a decisive step toward a true culture of consent.”
There are at least 230,000 incidents of sexual violence per year in France, according to a Senate report. Less than half of those are reported to the police, and only around 8,000 result in convictions.
France joins a number of countries that had updated their rape laws in light of the #MeToo movement in 2016, according to a 2024 study of rape laws in Europe. Since 2016, at least a dozen OECD member countries, including Spain, Germany, Denmark, and Switzerland, adopted consent-based rape laws, though not all use “yes-means-yes” models.
“Yes-means-yes models are affirmative and communicative, criminalising sexual acts without expressed consent, implying that consent only exists if freely expressed,” Sara Uhnoo, Sofie Erixon, and Moa Bladini, researchers from the University of Gothenburg, wrote in the 2024 study. “No-means-no models criminalise sexual acts against someone’s will, implying that a lack of consent is expressed through rejection.”
Japan in 2023 redefined rape as “nonconsensual sexual intercourse,” and removed a requirement of physical force. Others have long based their legal definition of rape on the lack of consent: Canada’s rape law has included affirmative consent since 1983, while the U.K. made consent a central element for sexual offenses in 2003. In the U.S., rape laws vary from state to state.
But a number of other developed countries still follow force-based rape laws. Among OECD European countries, Estonia, Italy, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia still primarily follow a force-based definition of rape. Most include provisions for if a person is incapable of self-defense or unable to express their will, such as if they are unconscious or intoxicated.
Some countries, though, are considering reforms to their rape laws. In 2022, Slovakia considered an amendment that would broaden the definition of sexual assault to include a lack of consent. Although the proposal received widespread public support, Slovakia did not have a consent-based legal definition of rape as of last year, according to Amnesty International. In Italy, a bill to introduce consent as the central element in defining rape was proposed in February last year and is under review. And Estonia’s Ministry of Justice is currently considering a draft law based on the affirmative yes-means-yes principle of consent.
The Czech Republic in 2025 changed the legal definition of rape from a force or coercion model to non-consensual intercourse based on the “no-mean-no” principle—a less strict model of consent. Poland, too, approved a consent-based rape law last year that came into effect in February. Under the new law, rape is defined as sexual intercourse without the “conscious and voluntary consent” of the other person.
South Korea’s criminal code also still defines rape as requiring “violence or intimidation,” rather than the lack of consent alone. Since 2016, women’s rights groups, opposition lawmakers, and some government agencies have repeatedly called for a consent-based legal definition of rape, and several bills for a consent-based definition have been introduced in the National Assembly between 2020 and 2024, but none was passed into law.
How and whether to include a lack of consent as a requisite for rape remains a point of contention in terms of how it impacts the prosecution of rape, even as many countries culturally and politically move towards consent-based models.
Critics of consent-based models say it places the burden of proof on victims to show they did not consent, which can be more difficult in situations without witnesses or other documentation, according to the University of Gothenburg researchers. Others argue that the legal definition of consent leaves too much room for interpretation of what behaviors constitute consent or its withdrawal.
But critics of force-based models say requiring the use of force for a sexual act to be considered rape excludes many victims who experience sexual assault without overt violence, or who “freeze,” submit out of fear, or are incapacitated, the researchers say. Critics say force-based definitions perpetuate rape culture and victim-blaming. Force-based laws often also require victims to show signs of resistance or injury to prove they were raped, which can make prosecution more difficult.
“The narrow definition of rape based on force and coercion does not take into account the fact that a reaction known as ‘frozen fright’ or ‘tonic immobility,’ and not active physical resistance, is rape victims’ most common response,” according to a report by the E.U. “Besides situations in which victims fear for their life and are thus involuntarily passive, traditional force-based definitions also ignore many other situations in which the victim is unable to react, such as surprise aggression, aggression against a background of power relations, sexual assault as part of a generalised pattern of violence in abusive relations, etc.”
During the French trial, some defense lawyers argued that the accused were not guilty of rape because they were not aware that Pelicot, who had been drugged unconscious by her husband Dominique, was not in a position to give her consent. The new law is able to counter that claim, as consent must be “free and informed, specific, prior and revocable.”
Many critics of force-based laws also point to the Istanbul Convention, a landmark international treaty which set out legally binding standards for preventing violence against women, protecting victims, and prosecuting offenders. Under the convention, member states, which includes many OECD countries, are obligated to define rape based on lack of freely given consent, rather than requiring proof of force, coercion, or threat. The treaty was adopted by the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers in 2011 and came into force in 2014.
Five E.U. member countries have not ratified the Istanbul Convention as of last year: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, and Slovakia. Some countries that ratified the Istanbul Convention, like Estonia, Italy, Latvia, and Romania, have argued that the application of their existing laws are compliant with the Istanbul Convention even though they have not modified their criminal definition of rape.
In 2022, the European Commission proposed adopting a “yes-means-yes” model across the European Union. But 14 of 27 member states did not agree, including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands and France.
The post France Just Updated Its Rape Law. Other Developed Countries Still Haven’t appeared first on TIME.
