July 26, 2013
The French parliament lifted a ban on insulting the president that had been in place since 1881. It had be illegal to insult the French president and those who risked it could be fined. In the 1960s, de Gaulle’s government convicted 350 people for insulting the president in just nine years, deploying it as a powerful weapon against his critics. The government lifted the ban after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the law violated the freedom of expression.
