France criticised for failure to ban smacking 法国因没能禁止家长打孩子受批评

媒体英语会带大家一起学习 BBC 撰稿人在报道世界大事时常用到的单词和短语。

法国政府因没能有效阻止一些家长在对儿女进行管教时打孩子而受到批评。欧洲委员会说法国有关体罚方面的法律条约“不够明确，没有足够约束力，也不够具体”，但与此同时委员会也认可家长“管教孩子的权利”。以下是 Lucy Williamson 的报道：

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.