What a historical day for couples in France willing to adopt. This Friday December 4, 2020 the National Assembly has endorsed the plenary adoption rights for unmarried, civilly partnered or common-law husband and wife couples. To the applause of a part of the assembly room, mainly from the left. Right parties Les Républicains and Rassemblement national were against it, but unsuccessfully.
At the beginning of the talks, junior minister for the protection of children Adrien Taquet said unmarried couples could not adopt a child together. Only one of the two members of the couple is now allowed to adopt the child. The article 2 of the bill plans to soften measures as for adoption: adopting parents now have “to be able to prove they have been living together for at least a year” rather than two, and “both be 26+ years old”, before, they had to be at least 28 years old.
As for the bill article, spokeswoman Monique Limon (LREM) says this bill is “fair”. Other amendments had been proposed by the LREM group to drop the minimal age below 26 years old. A text that has sparked a lot of opposition in the right parties. According to LR deputy Thibault Bazin, “in the event the sole interest of the child takes priority, then it better to give them as many guarantees as possible”. And he said it could have been better to stick to adoption rights for married couples only.
