Pacte civil de solidarité
Encyclopedia
In France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, a pacte civil de solidarité (English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

: "civil pact of solidarity") commonly known as a PACS /paks/ (or PaCS, and now also pacse, see below), is a form of civil union
Civil union
A civil union, also referred to as a civil partnership, is a legally recognized form of partnership similar to marriage. Beginning with Denmark in 1989, civil unions under one name or another have been established by law in many developed countries in order to provide same-sex couples rights,...

 between two adults (same-sex or opposite-sex) for organising their joint life. It brings rights and responsibilities, but less so than marriage
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...

. From a legal standpoint, a PACS is a "contract" drawn up between the two individuals, which is stamped and registered by the clerk of the court. In some areas, couples signing a PACS have the option of undergoing a formal ceremony at the City Hall identical to that of civil marriage. Since 2006, individuals who have registered a PACS are no longer considered "single" in terms of their marital status; their birth records will be amended to show their status as pacsé (in a PACS).

The acronym has generated the French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...

 se pacser /pak'se/, conjugated and accepted in all regular forms and gives the adjective pacsé for this form of civil union.

History

The law (Loi n°99-944 du 15 novembre 1999 relative au pacte civil de solidarité ) was voted by the French Parliament in November 1999 following some controversy. While it was pushed by the government of Prime Minister
Prime Minister of France
The Prime Minister of France in the Fifth Republic is the head of government and of the Council of Ministers of France. The head of state is the President of the French Republic...

 Lionel Jospin
Lionel Jospin
Lionel Jospin is a French politician, who served as Prime Minister of France from 1997 to 2002.Jospin was the Socialist Party candidate for President of France in the elections of 1995 and 2002. He was narrowly defeated in the final runoff election by Jacques Chirac in 1995...

 in 1998, it was also opposed, mostly by people on the right-wing who oppose gay rights, such as Christine Boutin
Christine Boutin
Christine Boutin is a French politician and a major Christian democratic figure in France. She served as a member of the French National Assembly representing Yvelines, from 1986 until 2007, when she was appointed Minister of Housing and Urban Development by President Nicolas Sarkozy...

 and Philippe de Villiers
Philippe de Villiers
Viscount Philippe Le Jolis de Villiers de Saintignon, known as Philippe de Villiers, born on 25 March 1949, is a French politician. He was the Mouvement pour la France nominee for the French presidential election of 2007. He received 2.23% of the vote, putting him in sixth place. As only the top...

, who argued that PACS and the recognition of homosexual unions would be disastrous for French society. Only one right-wing deputy, Roselyne Bachelot, declared herself in favour of PACS.

The debate is remembered for a few incidents, such as when Christine Boutin
Christine Boutin
Christine Boutin is a French politician and a major Christian democratic figure in France. She served as a member of the French National Assembly representing Yvelines, from 1986 until 2007, when she was appointed Minister of Housing and Urban Development by President Nicolas Sarkozy...

 spoke for five hours in the French National Assembly
French National Assembly
The French National Assembly is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of France under the Fifth Republic. The upper house is the Senate ....

, and also at some point waved a Christian Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

 in the direction of the speaker of the Assembly — a surprising gesture in a country where laïcité
Laïcité
French secularism, in French, laïcité is a concept denoting the absence of religious involvement in government affairs as well as absence of government involvement in religious affairs. French secularism has a long history but the current regime is based on the 1905 French law on the Separation of...

(implying no intervention of religion into political matters) is specified in the Constitution
Constitution of France
The current Constitution of France was adopted on 4 October 1958. It is typically called the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, and replaced that of the Fourth Republic dating from 1946. Charles de Gaulle was the main driving force in introducing the new constitution and inaugurating the Fifth...

. Christine Boutin also said that "All civilizations that recognized and justified homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...

 as a normal lifestyle met decadence." Anti-PACS opponents also staged a series of street protest
Protest
A protest is an expression of objection, by words or by actions, to particular events, policies or situations. Protests can take many different forms, from individual statements to mass demonstrations...

s, but the turnout, by their own admission, was disappointingly low. At its creation, Jacques Chirac
Jacques Chirac
Jacques René Chirac is a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He previously served as Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988 , and as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.After completing his studies of the DEA's degree at the...

 described PACS as "not adapted to the needs of families". However, most initial opponents now widely accept the PACS (including Jacques Chirac and Christine Boutin, who have publicly changed their mind on the subject, because it is very widely supported by French opinion and society).

It was to be a marked improvement and alternative over the previous certificat de concubinage
Concubinage
Concubinage is the state of a woman or man in an ongoing, usually matrimonially oriented, relationship with somebody to whom they cannot be married, often because of a difference in social status or economic condition.-Concubinage:...

 notoire
, which had minimal rights (and responsibilities) and had been seen as having pejorative overtones. The situation of concubinage only made certain benefits extend to the other partner in a union, and did not settle any issue regarding property, taxes, etc.

Initially, PACS offered the right to file joint income tax
Income tax
An income tax is a tax levied on the income of individuals or businesses . Various income tax systems exist, with varying degrees of tax incidence. Income taxation can be progressive, proportional, or regressive. When the tax is levied on the income of companies, it is often called a corporate...

es only after 3 years. As of 2005, all PACS couples are required to file joint taxes, in the same manner as married couples. Due to the way that the progressive tax
Progressive tax
A progressive tax is a tax by which the tax rate increases as the taxable base amount increases. "Progressive" describes a distribution effect on income or expenditure, referring to the way the rate progresses from low to high, where the average tax rate is less than the marginal tax rate...

 is applied in France, a couple filing joint income taxes, in almost all cases, pays less tax than they would filing separately if one of the partners earns substantially more than the other.

Wealth tax (impôt sur la fortune) was consistently applied to the combined assets of both partners, since the introduction of the PACS in 1999.

In 2004, PACS was described in a report to the Garde des Sceaux (minister for justice) as "a new way of conjugality, answering many needs and inscribed in continuity".

In December 2004, the French Government began preparations for expanding the rights granted in PACS. French LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...

 groups considered it a tactic for avoiding debate on same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage is marriage between two persons of the same biological sex or social gender. Supporters of legal recognition for same-sex marriage typically refer to such recognition as marriage equality....

.

A parliamentary "Report on the Family and the Rights of Children" was released on January 25, 2006. Although the committee recommended increasing some rights given in PACS in areas such as property rights, laws of succession and taxation, it recommended maintaining prohibitions against marriage, adoption, and access to medically-assisted reproduction
Artificial insemination
Artificial insemination, or AI, is the process by which sperm is placed into the reproductive tract of a female for the purpose of impregnating the female by using means other than sexual intercourse or natural insemination...

 for same-sex couples. Because of this, left-wing members of the committee rejected the report.

The report also argued that the differences in rights between concubinage, PACS and marriage reflect different levels of commitment and obligations on the part of the couples who enter into them. The committee renewed its support for this tiered system and recommended that the various rights and obligations of each type of union be clearly explained to couples when they register for a PACS, marry, or have a child.

Figures

According to the 2004 Demographic Report by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee
INSEE
INSEE is the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies. It collects and publishes information on the French economy and society, carrying out the periodic national census. Located in Paris, it is the French branch of Eurostat, European Statistical System...

), the number of marriages in France had fallen each year since 2000.

266,000 civil marriages took place in 2004, a decline of 5.9% from 2003. However, the report found that the number of couples getting PACS had increased every year except 2001. There was a 29% increase in PACS between 2001 and 2002 and a 25% increase between 2002 and 2003. For the first 9 months of 2004, 27,000 PACS were signed compared to 22,000 in 2003.
The report found that one PACS in 10 had been dissolved (less than divorces for couples married for the same period, for which one marriage in three will be dissolved by divorce or separation after the first 3 years during which most signed PACS are dissolved before becoming more stable than marriages).

A parliamentary report released in January 2006 said a total of around 170,000 PACS had been signed.

New Caledonia and Wallis and Futuna

In April 2009, the French National Assembly
French National Assembly
The French National Assembly is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of France under the Fifth Republic. The upper house is the Senate ....

 voted to approve the extension of PACS to two French overseas collectivities: New Caledonia
New Caledonia
New Caledonia is a special collectivity of France located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, east of Australia and about from Metropolitan France. The archipelago, part of the Melanesia subregion, includes the main island of Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands, the Belep archipelago, the Isle of...

 and Wallis and Futuna
Wallis and Futuna
Wallis and Futuna, officially the Territory of the Wallis and Futuna Islands , is a Polynesian French island territory in the South Pacific between Tuvalu to the northwest, Rotuma of Fiji to the west, the main part of Fiji to the southwest, Tonga to the southeast,...

. Thus, couples in New Caledonia and Wallis and Futuna are able to enter a PACS in the same way as couples in Metropolitan France
Metropolitan France
Metropolitan France is the part of France located in Europe. It can also be described as mainland France or as the French mainland and the island of Corsica...

. Given their autonomous status, these collectivities did not automatically begin performing PACS when they were introduced in Metropolitan France
Metropolitan France
Metropolitan France is the part of France located in Europe. It can also be described as mainland France or as the French mainland and the island of Corsica...

 in 1999. Indeed, in other autonomous collectivites, such as French Polynesia
French Polynesia
French Polynesia is an overseas country of the French Republic . It is made up of several groups of Polynesian islands, the most famous island being Tahiti in the Society Islands group, which is also the most populous island and the seat of the capital of the territory...

 and Mayotte
Mayotte
Mayotte is an overseas department and region of France consisting of a main island, Grande-Terre , a smaller island, Petite-Terre , and several islets around these two. The archipelago is located in the northern Mozambique Channel in the Indian Ocean, namely between northwestern Madagascar and...

, PACS cannot be performed.

Current trends

Although originally intended for same-sex couples, currently in France the majority of couples taking advantage of its law are now heterosexual couples who for one reason or another choose civil union rather than marriage, and that more heterosexual couples are opting for civil union rather than marriage. In fact, this trend was already in place in 2000, with 75% of unions between heterosexual couples (42% the previous years) and 95% in 2009. The process is commonly referred to as getting PACSed.

See also

  • LGBT rights in France
  • Same-sex marriage in France
    Same-sex marriage in France
    Same-sex marriage cannot legally be performed in France, though some foreign same-sex marriages are recognized and the PACS, which confers some of the same rights and responsibilities as marriage, is available to same-sex couples....

  • Recognition of same-sex unions in Europe

External links

Text of the law
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