Attal law to toughen juvenile justice finally adopted by Parliament

Parliament definitively adopted on Monday, after a final vote in the Senate, a bill by Gabriel Attal to toughen juvenile justice and make parents of juvenile offenders more responsible.

"Restoring the authority" of justice, "empowering" parents and "trying repeat juvenile offenders more quickly": the former Prime Minister's initiative is based on these three promises, made after the riots of summer 2023, which involved many young people.

Nearly two years later, the man who took the lead of the presidential Renaissance party managed to bring his initiative to fruition, with 223 senators for and 112 against, during this last vote which was hardly in doubt in a chamber dominated by a right-centrist alliance which generally supports the text.

The Assembly approved the bill identically on Tuesday, by 341 votes in favor and 187 against. In both chambers, the entire left opposed the text, with professionals in the youth justice system (PJJ) expressing their outrage at measures that, in their view, call into question the very principle of juvenile justice: the primacy of education over repression.

The leader of the Ensemble pour la République (EPR) group, on the contrary, defends the need to "return to simple and clear principles" and "adapt our criminal response", because "the young people of 2025 are not the young people of 1945", the date of publication of the order establishing the rules of criminal procedure specific to minors in France.

"The text does not upset the balance of our juvenile justice system. It does not substitute repression for education. It coordinates them to ensure that the judicial response is swift, appropriate, and effective," Patrick Mignola, Minister for Relations with Parliament, explained to senators.

The reform includes the creation of a civil fine for parents who do not respond to summons to court hearings, and the much-criticized creation of an immediate appearance procedure for repeat offenders aged 16 and over.

Another key measure: the reversal of the principle of "minority excuse," according to which a minor is punished less severely than an adult. From the age of 16, this will become the exception, which must be justified by the judge, and no longer the rule, for cases of repeat offenses punishable by at least five years of imprisonment.

For Gabriel Attal, this parliamentary success is welcome, almost a year after a dissolution that suddenly moved him from the spotlight of Matignon to the less media-friendly daily life of managing the parliamentary group and organizing the party.

The Hauts-de-Seine MP, who has been discreet in the Assembly ring in recent months, has come a long way with his bill. Its review has been marked by several snubs in both chambers of Parliament.

In the National Assembly, key measures were eliminated in committee before being resurrected in public session. The same scenario occurred in the Senate, where rapporteur Francis Szpiner, a member of the Republicans allied with Renaissance in the governing coalition, expressed a highly critical view of the text, fearing "a circumstantial law" written "in the heat of the moment," "useless," and "inapplicable."

But the government alliance struggled to save the initiative and preserve the bulk of the key measures, thanks in particular to the mobilization of Minister of Justice Gérald Darmanin, a supporter of the text.

This did not extinguish the anger of the left, which joined forces with the youth justice system (PJJ) to describe these measures as "populist, simplistic, repressive" and even "dangerous."

Socialists, environmentalists and rebels have also promised to refer many measures to the Constitutional Council, hoping to see them censored on the grounds, in particular, that they contravene children's rights and the principles underlying juvenile justice.

The "only obvious result" of this text will be "to weaken our rule of law once again," lamented Socialist Senator Corinne Narassiguin, denouncing a "gimmick from Mr. Attal" that "will sully republican principles."