In the context of France's Universal Periodic Review at the Human Rights Council on September 29, 2023, the ECLJ issued the following statement:

Mr. President,

The case of France shows how a bad political government, like that of Emmanuel Macron, can lead to a collapse of freedoms. France is becoming impoverished; public services are falling apart; and the French are being dispossessed of their own country.

The French are no longer born free, but indebted to 3,000 billion euros of public debt. This debt is fiscally crushing the middle class  and putting the French people under pressure, forcing them to sell off their assets and give up their political freedom.

The "yellow vests" social protests were brutally repressed, leaving thousands injured. Police fired rubber bullets into protesters' faces, crippling and making blind hundreds of French people.

Excellencies, security is the first freedom. However, insecurity is becoming alarming: shootings, drug trafficking, assaults in the streets, homelessness and separatism in the suburbs: the French are being told to accept insecurity and uncontrolled immigration.

Freedom of movement and religious freedom have also been shamefully flouted by a blind policy of lockdown. For months, millions of French people have been prevented from making a living from their work, and have been denied the right to meet or gather, even to pray. After promising never to make vaccination mandatory, President Macron has instituted a policy of segregation against the unvaccinated.

The healthcare system is going through an unprecedented crisis, with the government closing hospital beds and preparing to offer euthanasia to the elderly and suffering.

While the number of abortions has never been so high and continues to bleed the French people, Mr. Macron wants to make it a constitutional right.

At a time when the standard of public schools is collapsing, when more is said about sex education than mathematics, Emmanuel Macron forbids parents to homeschool their children.

Mr. President, for a people, the first condition for the very existence of its freedoms is to be well governed. Clearly, this is not the case in France.

I thank you.