In its decision in Seydi et autres v France, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has condemned France for identity checks deemed “discriminatory.” Checks are “the most widely carried out police operation in France,” the National Police Inspectorate (IGPN) acknowledged in 2023, and they are “almost systematically associated with security pat-downs.” The Court of Auditors estimated their number at 47 million for the year 2021, and it is not seriously disputed that racial profiling is widespread. However, the Court’s decision means that, in the vast majority of cases, victims of discriminatory identity checks will find it impossible to prove their allegations. This runs counter to a large body of national and international evidence indicating that stop-and-search practices in France disproportionately target young men from visible minorities.

Six French citizens of African or North African origin, residing in Roubaix, Marseille, Vaulx-en-Velin, Saint-Ouen, and Besançon, denounced “racial profiling” during 2011 and 2012. They therefore sought a conviction for discrimination, violation of privacy, and freedom of movement. They also sought to compel the French authorities to implement measures to prevent discriminatory checks and ensure the traceability of these checks.

These six plaintiffs are part of a group of 13 men who launched a legal battle, denouncing unjustified checks, sometimes associated with frisking, insults, or informal address.

After losing at first instance in October 2013, all the plaintiffs appealed, and in June 2015, the Paris Court of Appeal ruled in favor of five of them, ordering the State to pay €1,500 in damages to each. In November 2016, the Court of Cassation definitively condemned the State in three cases, a historic first. The six men who had not won their case therefore decided to appeal to the ECtHR in 2017.

The decision handed down on Thursday, June 26, 2025 comes at a time when the extent of this racist practice was confirmed by the Defender of Rights, Claire Hédon in a report which states that “Young men perceived as Black, Arab, or North African are four times more likely to have been stopped than the rest of the population, and 12 times more likely to be subject to a more intensive stop”.

This is the first time France has been condemned on this ground. While stating that it was “aware of the difficulties police officers face in deciding, very quickly and without necessarily having clear internal instructions, whether they are facing a threat,” [129] the Court concluded, regarding  Karim Touil, who was stopped nearly 15 years ago, that there exists in his case “a presumption of discriminatory treatment against him, which the government has failed to rebut” [92]. Five other applicants, however, had their applications dismissed. Like the domestic courts, the Court considered that, for the identity checks of five of the six applicants, all of which had had at least one identified legal basis, no individualised prima facie evidence of a differentiation of treatment had been produced by demonstrating the coexistence of sufficiently strong, clear and concordant inferences capable of giving rise to a presumption of discriminatory treatment [122].

Defender of Rights Claire Hédon recommends (p. 43) implementing traceability for identity checks to ensure that those stopped have the opportunity to seek redress, particularly in the event of an allegation of discrimination. She also suggests amending the legal framework for identity checks by specifying in Article 78-2 of the French Code of Criminal Procedure that identity checks must not be based on protected characteristics, and that the reason for the person’s selection must be objectively clarified and stated to the person stopped, wherever possible.

As early as 2021, the Paris Court of Appeal had already condemned the State for gross negligence following the identity checks of three high school students in 2017 by police officers at Gare du Nord. However, it is clear that no action has been taken since then. This state of affairs is all the more worrying in the context where, a week earlier, the Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, had launched a veritable hunt for exiles in stations and on trains, against which several unions from the world of justice had filed an appeal with the Conseil d’Etat.

The decision is important, but suffers from a real ambiguity: the Court assures, on the one hand, that “identity checks motivated by physical characteristics, associated with a real or supposed origin” are well established in France, and certainly cannot be reduced to “isolated cases”, but disputes that this is a “systemic” or “generalized” practice. The Council of State (where, notably, the French president of the ECHR, Mattias Guyomar, has spent his entire career) had made a comparable analysis in 2023.

This decision represents a crucial step towards justice and accountability. However, it is clear that the Court did not address the structural nature of discriminatory stop and search practices in France. The risk is that this decision could further entrench the practice of arbitrary stop and search, already common in much of Europe, which stigmatizes migrants and other visible minorities, perpetuates stereotypes, and constitutes an ineffective and counterproductive method of policing.