Click to expand Image France's junior Minister for equality Aurore Berge during the presentation of the new national Plan to fight against racism, antisemitism and discrimination based on origin at the Bibliotheque Nationale of France (BNF) in Paris on July 6, 2026. © 2026 Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images The French government announced a new national plan last week aimed at combating racism, antisemitism, and discrimination. Unfortunately, the plan fails to tackle the systemic and institutional nature of racism in France.Adopted on July 6 and extending from 2026 through 2029, the action plan lists 55 measures focused on education and training to strengthen memorialization related to racism, antisemitism, and other discrimination, while also addressing rising hate crime in France.However, the plan misses an opportunity to build on French President Emmanuel Macron’s May 2026 speech addressing the need for reparations in connection with France’s legacy of enslavement. Civil society and representatives of France’s overseas territories outlined to the French government the connection between France’s enslavement and colonial legacies and the need for reparatory justice measures that tackle contemporary systemic inequalities and racism.The plan’s outlined racism training for police officers does not address the current realities of discriminatory police practices, which continue to foster distrust in authorities among population groups affected by both racial profiling and hate crime.The plan mentions “memorial sites” to educate students and public servants, including police, to help them better engage with history and to “foster a better understanding of the mechanisms that lead to prejudice and discrimination.” It says new educational resources will be created to teach France’s “history of slavery and the slave trade.”While memorialization and education are important to help shift attitudes, the plan misses a critical opportunity to link them to wider efforts to tackle structural racism and discrimination by the state.The plan commits to “measuring and revealing discrimination to better combat it,” but fails to create structures for collecting disaggregated equality data, which France has called unconstitutional. The United Nations has provided guidance on human rights-based data collection, stressing its importance in protecting racialized people.In January 2026, the European Commission adopted a new EU Anti-Racism Strategy for 2026-2030, which, among others, seeks to improve European Union member states’ collection of equality data to combat structural racism.Having an anti-racism action plan is not enough. France should stop treating racism as a problem of individual prejudice and instead recognize that racism is systemic and thus requires systemic responses.