Right-wing journalist and politician Éric Zemmour has been acquitted by the courts after standing trial for claiming that there is a link between immigration and crime. Zemmour made the comments during a television programme broadcast on the Public Sénat channel in January 2022, during the last presidential election campaign. During the debate, Zemmour explained that “if we have such explosive crime, it is because of immigration.” He drew the following conclusion: “If we stop immigration, there will be virtually no crime in our country.”
Following this statement, Zemmour was prosecuted “for incitement to hatred based on [ethnic] origin.”
The judgment was handed down by the Paris Criminal Court on Wednesday, July 2nd. The judges ruled that the comments made by the former candidate “do not meet the criteria for the offence of incitement to hatred.”
“However excessive or provocative these comments may seem,” they do not apply to all immigrants “but only to a criminal fringe,” the court noted.
This is not the first time that Zemmour has been the subject of legal proceedings for comments deemed hateful or racist. In March 2025, he was fined for “racial insults” after claiming that “two Frances” had clashed during the Crépol tragedy. But this time, the court decided not to venture onto the slippery slope of condemning a political statement made in the context of a debate.
The question of the link between immigration and crime is a recurring theme in French political debate. Although there are many statistics to support the correlation between the two phenomena, a large section of the political class stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the obvious. There are countless figures proving that Zemmour’s assertion is not a racist exaggeration. The Left, however, persists in denying this reality.
Far-left MP Antoine Léaument for instance claimed again this week on X that “82% of people questioned by the police are French.” The argument only holds water by playing on the word “French,” to also refer to the children of immigrants. In response, analyst Marc Vanguard, a specialist in crime and immigration statistics, reminded Léaument of another truth, namely that foreign perpetrators are over-represented in 87% of offences.
