France officially recognized the Armenian Genocide on January 29, 2001.
Twenty years ago, French President Jacques Chirac promulgated the law relating to the recognition by France of the genocide of Armenians.
Il y a vingt ans, jour pour jour, le Président Jacques Chirac promulguait la loi relative à la reconnaissance par la #France du #génocidearménien de 1915. pic.twitter.com/iGPdFKvBQy
— Hasmik Tolmajian (@tolmajian) January 29, 2021
On February 5, 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron declared April 24 as Armenian Genocide commemoration day in France.
On April 24, 2019 France held its first “national day of commemoration of the Armenian genocide,” fulfilling a pledge by President Emmanuel Macron that sparked an angry response from the Turkish government.
Macron announced the commemoration at a meeting with representatives of the country’s large Armenian community in February 2019, honoring a promise made during his 2017 presidential campaign.
“France is, first and foremost, the country that knows how to look history in the face,” he said at the time, noting that France was among the first countries to denounce the World War I slaughter of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.