[LINK] "France's PACS, 10 years later"

[rfmcdonald]

Over at France's Cité Gay, a writer asks ("Le Pacte Civil de Solidarité (Pacs) fête ses 10 ans," ""The PACS celebrates its 10th birthday) what the PACS, a " form of civil union between two adults (same-sex or opposite-sex) for organising their joint life [that] brings rights and responsibilities, but less so than marriage," is like now. Right-wingers worst-case claims, are, of course, decidedly counterfactual.

The PACS at its adoption was assailed by opponents on the grounds that it would lower the birth rate of France and it would devalue marriage. With a fertility rate that exceeds two children per woman, France ranks alongside Ireland as the champion of the birth rate in Europe. INSEE in its Demographic Balance in 2008 report was the beginning of the observation that France was the top European countries in terms of births and the number of marriages remained relatively stable.

But is the success of the PACS that does not contradict this. 146,084 PACS were registered in 2008 by the Statistical Office of the Ministry of Justice, an increase of 43% compared to 2007 (against 32% between 2006 and 2007). With these figures, France had passed since the millionth PACS mark. PACS' endings are also stable: 23,354 civil partnerships were broken in 2008, against 22,783 in 2007. Finally, same-sex couples constitute a stable rate percetnage of about 6% of registered partnerships in total, but their number continues to grow in absolute numbers although less so than for same-sex couples.

This, as the author notes, compares nicely to the stability of relationships in general.

The critics of Pacs suggest that PACS are unstable despite the facts without commenting on specific statistics of divorce, which continues to grow in number and has risen percentage-wise (over 72 000 divorces in 2007) and to a lesser extent the acceptance of divorce has almost doubled in ten years (28 000 divorces in 2007), only twenty years after it became possible. the fault is now 20 years into a minority when it was the rule.In 2007, the number of divorces totaled 134,477, after a period of stability around 120,000 divorces a year from 1996 to 2002.

It is society as a whole that wants more flexibility in organizing our families, as is reflected in the success of PACS and the modes of termination of marriage; births and unions are increasingly disconnected with number of births outside marriage in the majority.

Survivor rights and binational PACS remain major problems.