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In Germany and other European countries, “consensual sex” between an adult and a child is unthinkable - the age of consent puts a legal stop to this, in Germany it is 14 years.
France now also wants to explicitly stipulate such an age of consent, the lower house of parliament voted for it on Thursday evening.
The occasion is a series of allegations of abuse against celebrities.
A popular television journalist is also under suspicion.
A second #MeToo debate has been raging in France since the beginning of the year.
The focus is no longer on abuse in the film industry, but instead on pedophilia, incest and sexual violence in families.
A number of well-known personalities are in the pillory - political scientists, actors and representatives of the film and television industry.
Their children or others accused them of sexual abuse or at least its tacit tolerance.
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“We listen to you, we believe you,” President Emmanuel Macron said in a video message to the victims at the end of January.
According to the will of the head of state, a regular age of consent is to be introduced, up to which there can be no consensual sex with minors.
Although there are also many protective paragraphs in France, according to children's rights associations there is a gap in the law.
According to the bill, which the Paris National Assembly has now approved in the first reading, the age of consent should be 15 years and in incest cases even 18 years.
"Sexual penetration" and oral sex up to this age of consent should therefore be imprisoned for 20 years in the future, and even 30 years for incest between blood relatives.
The elite Parisian family was silent about incest
As early as 2018, the government expanded the criminal offense of rape to better protect children - but waived an explicit age of consent.
Previously, the case of an adult French man who was acquitted after allegedly "consensual" sex with an eleven year old had made waves.
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The new #MeToo debate started with a book at the beginning of the year: It was written by lawyer Camille Kouchner, the daughter of Doctors Without Borders founder and former Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.
She raises serious allegations against her stepfather, the well-known political scientist Olivier Duhamel.
According to the work “La Familia grande” (The Big Family), Duhamel is said to have sexually abused Camille Kouchner's twin brother at the age of 14.
The Parisian intellectual family therefore covered the cloak of silence over the deeds.
After the book was published, Duhamel had to resign from all posts at the Paris elite University Sciences Po.
University director Frédéric Mion also fell after weeks of student protests over the allegation of complicity.
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The Kouchner book led to a dam breach: Thousands of French reported under hashtags such as #Metooinceste and #scienceporcs (“science pigs”, a play on Sciences Po) of sexual assault in families or at universities.
Celebrities were also suspected of abuse.
The popular TV journalist and long-time main news presenter of the first TV program TF1, Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, is now under suspicion: The 37-year-old writer Florence Porcel accuses him of raping her as a young woman in 2004 and 2009.
Through his lawyer, the 73-year-old rejected the allegations as "absurd and false".
Author Porcel has also written a book about her case - albeit a novel that has received little attention so far and in which she confesses her disappointed “love” for the alleged perpetrator.
That is why more and more voices are being raised not only to believe the allegedly abused.
The well-known lawyer Caty Richard, for example, warned in a television interview: "One must not only put oneself in the shoes of the victims, but also listen to the accused."