France criticised for failure to ban smacking 法國因沒能禁止家長打孩子受批評

媒體英語會帶大家一起學習 BBC 撰稿人在報道世界大事時常用到的單詞和短語。

法國政府因沒能有效阻止一些家長在對兒女進行管教時打孩子而受到批評。歐洲委員會說法國有關體罰方面的法律條約“不夠明確，沒有足夠約束力，也不夠具體”，但與此同時委員會也認可家長“管教孩子的權利”。以下是 Lucy Williamson 的報道：

France allows parents the "right to discipline" their children, while banning violence against them. In 2013, a father was fined 500 Euros for smacking his nine-year-old son - the ruling sparked a fierce debate about the rights of parents and their children, with one poll suggesting more than 80% of French saw the matter as a personal one - not one for the courts to decide.

Responding to the European ruling, France's minister for the family, Laurence Rossignol, told the French news agency AFP that she didn't believe a law on smacking was necessary: "for abusive parents, we have the penal code" she said, but we do need a collective debate on the usefulness of corporal punishment.

At the moment, it is up to French courts to decide where the line between violence and acceptable punishment lies. The Council of Europe committee has called for an explicitprohibition of all corporal punishment of children.