Palls-shifting events in gender equality: the Pélicot trial and the emergence of sexual consent in French legislative reform

In 2023, during negotiations on the European directive on gender-based violence and domestic violence, France was among the countries opposed to a common definition of rape, based on sexual consent, with Germany, Hungary or even Poland. This opposition is in line with French legislation, which includes a presumption of consent in the Criminal Code, contrary to the text proposed by the European Commission. If the directive was finally adopted, this was done without Article 5, which dealt with a common definition of rape. Two years later, on the initiative of members of French Parliament, Marie-Charlotte Garin et Véronique Riotton, a proposed law has been tabled to reform the legal definition of rape and sexual assault to add the concept of non-consent. It is now following his path, after a favourable vote in the National Assembly and the Senate. This is a major shift in France's position compared to the one it defended a few months earlier. As a matter of fact, following the Pélicot’s trial in 2024, the issue of sexual consent has become particularly prominent in France. Long confined to the private sphere and treated by criminal law solely from the perspective of coercicion or violence, the concept of consent is becoming politicised. Based on agenda-setting theories, this work shows how the Pélicot trial disrupted the traditional logic of political decision-making, priorities and consensus. How did a highly publicised court case bring about a major change in the French political agenda, to the point of enabling a law supported by both the opposition and the majority to be passed? Based on qualitative (interviews, parliamentary speeches and debates, media coverage and advocacy by organizations) and quantitative (descriptive statistics) data, this paper examines the issues related to the agenda-setting of sexual consent in France and the shift that has taken place since the Pélicot’s trial. It questions the role of an event in putting a new issue on the agenda over a relatively short political period. Data analysis is based on an inductive qualitative approach, assisted by NVivo software, supplemented by quantitative analysis to assess changes on the issue over time.