France is preparing one of its most ambitious legislative responses to gender-based violence in years.
On 11 August 2026, lawmakers deposited Proposition de loi n° 3106, a wide-ranging bill designed to provide what its authors call an “integral response” to sexual and gender-based violence against women and children.
The proposal comes at a critical moment. France already has an extensive legal framework addressing rape, sexual assault, domestic violence and intimate-partner homicide. Yet recent enforcement data show that having laws on the books does not necessarily mean that cases successfully move through the justice system.
That distinction should be at the centre of the debate over France’s latest reform.
What would France’s new GBV bill change?
Proposition de loi n° 3106 goes considerably further than creating a new offence or increasing a criminal penalty.
The bill proposes reforms across policing, justice, victim protection, cyberviolence, child protection and higher education. It also calls for specialized police units, mandatory professional training and a minimum set of investigative acts in cases involving sexual, gender-based and intrafamilial violence.
One of its most significant proposals is the creation of an independent Autorité de lutte contre les violences sexuelles et intrafamiliales.
The authority would evaluate whether measures against sexual and intrafamilial violence are actually being implemented and whether they are effective.
Its annual reporting would include indicators such as case-processing times, conviction rates, access to protection mechanisms and the resources allocated to implementation.
That matters because France’s enforcement problem is measurable.
France’s Problem Is Not Simply a Lack of Law
The 2026 Lex Feminae Index® assessment of France examined official 2024 administrative data from the Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Justice.
The results show substantial attrition within the criminal justice system.
For intimate-partner violence, 145,389 suspects entered the judicial dataset. 54,360 prosecutions were initiated and 42,229 final convictions were recorded.
For rape, 18,781 suspects entered the judicial dataset. Only 5,373 prosecutions were initiated, followed by 1,665 final convictions.
These figures correspond to annual system-level conviction ratios of approximately 29% for intimate-partner violence and 8.9% for rape relative to identified suspects.
The figures should not be interpreted as same-year victim-to-conviction rates. Criminal proceedings can extend across reporting years.But they reveal something important about the performance of the system.
The greatest narrowing occurs before trial.
The Prosecution Gap Matters
Approximately 37% of identified intimate-partner violence suspects reached prosecution. For rape, the figure was approximately 28%.
Once prosecution was initiated, the corresponding conviction ratios were considerably higher: 78% for intimate-partner violence and 31% for rape.
This suggests that one of France’s most important enforcement bottlenecks occurs at the prosecutorial-activation stage.
And that raises a fundamental question for Proposition de loi n° 3106:
Will the new law increase the number of protections available, or will it also improve the system’s ability to enforce the protections France already has?
The distinction is crucial.
The Bill Appears to Recognize The Enforcement Problem
There are reasons to consider Proposition de loi n° 3106 particularly important from an implementation perspective.
The proposal does not focus exclusively on substantive criminal law.
Specialized police units could affect the quality of initial investigations. Mandatory training could influence how cases are handled. Required investigative acts could reduce inconsistent case preparation.
Most importantly, an independent authority publishing enforcement indicators could make it easier to identify where cases are being lost.
That represents an important shift from measuring government action by the existence of policies toward measuring whether those policies produce results.
It is also an area where France still has significant data gaps.
France publishes comparatively detailed police and judicial statistics. Yet police and justice datasets are not completely interoperable, making it difficult to trace every case through the entire enforcement chain.
Protection orders provide another example.
In 2024, France recorded 6,826 applications for judicial protection orders. Of 6,741 decisions issued, approximately 91% granted protection.
That demonstrates that the mechanism is being used.
But consolidated national data do not provide the same visibility into what happens after a protection order is violated, including the speed of the judicial response and the resulting sanctions.
A protection mechanism cannot be evaluated solely by whether it exists or even by how frequently it is granted.
Its enforcement matters too.
The Real Test Comes After Parliament
France’s proposed legislation is ambitious.
Its authors envision a coordinated response spanning prevention, policing, justice, protection and institutional accountability. The proposal also anticipates significant public investment to support its implementation.
But passing a comprehensive law and delivering comprehensive protection are two different achievements.
If Proposition de loi n° 3106 becomes law, its success should ultimately be measured against outcomes: whether more viable cases reach prosecution, whether case-processing times improve, whether protection-order violations trigger effective responses and whether police and judicial data become sufficiently integrated to trace cases through the system.
France already demonstrates substantial legislative recognition of gender-based violence.
The next test is implementation.
For Institutum Lex Feminae, that distinction is fundamental.
Law on the books establishes protection. Law in action determines whether women actually receive it.
Institutum Lex Feminae is an independent audit and research institute examining the application of law, institutional accountability and measurable policy outcomes.
The Lex Feminae Index® evaluates gender-based violence enforcement through outcome-based indicators rather than legislative commitments alone.