Legal

On 8th October 2012, a group of associations invested in seeking reparations for slavery were invited to the official residence of the French government, Matignon, with the aim of setting up an interministerial meeting to begin discussions.

Following an interview on 2nd June 2005 with the ​Journal du dimanche, the historian Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, author of Traites négrières, essai d'histoire globale, was accused by the association CollectifDom of historical revisionism. In response to a question concerning the anti-Semitism of the (now discredited) comedian Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala, Pétré-Grenouilleau stated that, 'It goes beyond the case of Dieudonné.

On 23rd May 2005, the association CollectifDom lodged a complaint with the Nanterre Crown Crown against Nutrimaine, a commercial food producer well known for its trademark product, Banania (a banana flavoured chocolate drink usually consumed at breakfast).

On 7th January 2013, the association CollectifDom lodged a formal complaint against the comedian Nicolas Bedos for racial slurs following the publication of two online articles for the weekly magazine, Marianne. In Autumn 2012, Bedos had gone on holiday to Guadeloupe and had used this experience to write two articles, published on the 9th and 18th December 2012. These were entitled 'Island laziness' and 'A journey into Chirac'.

On 17th November 2006, the Parti Socialiste (PS) minister, Georges Frêche, made a controversial comment relating to the ethnic composition of the French football team. He stated that 'In this team, nine out of eleven players are Blacks. The norm would be more like three or four. That would reflect society. But if there are so many, it's because the Whites are rubbish. I'm ashamed of this country. Soon there will be eleven Blacks.

On 2nd December 2006, in an interview with Nice's regional newspaper, Var-Matin, Pascal Sevran, a TV presenter for France 2, responded to questions relating to a controversial phrase that appeared in his latest book Le Privilège des Jonquilles in which he had written 'Black dicks are responsible for the famine in Africa' ('La bite des Noirs est responsable de la famine en Afrique'). In response, Sevran stated 'So what? It's the truth. African is bursting with children who are born there without their parents being able to feed them. I'm not the only one saying it.

On 13 May 2013, Jean-Sébastien Vialatte, a minister for the right-wing party, the Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP), published a tweet in the wake of the disturbances that occurred in Paris following the victory of Paris-Saint-Germain, which stated that, 'No doubt the troublemakers are slave descendants they have an excuse #Taubira will compensate them' ('Les casseurs sont sûrement des descendants d’esclaves ils ont des excuses #Taubira va leur donner des compensations').