France

In 2020, the prosecution continued to implement the good practices as envisaged in the order on combatting discrimination, hate speech, and hate crimes issued on 4 April 2019. A specialist prosecutor is appointed within each prosecutorial office to ensure effective communication with the investigating services, and external partners, and to facilitate the forging relations among various counterparts.

Law no. 2020-766 of 24 June 2020 on combatting hateful content on the Internet, some provisions of which were later declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Council (namely due to their impinging upon the freedom of expression), addresses, among other things, sexual harassment motivated by bias. It anticipates the creation of a special jurisdiction deal for such offences as well as the possibility of filing a motion to this court online. A decree issued by the Minister of Justice on 24 November 2020 designated the Tribunal Judiciaire de Paris to undertake this particular role.

In August 2020, a Lyon region deputy received two anonymous letters containing racist insults and death threats. After a thorough investigation, the police identified the perpetrator who later admitted writing a number of similar letters sent to the President of the Republic, a lawyer from Lyon specializing in migration law, and a local NGO. The perpetrator was found guilty of, among other things, the offence of issuing death threats with a racist motive, and received a sentence of 12 months imprisonment, suspended on probation.