The French Senate has overwhelmingly voted to support a draft resolution adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism, Le Point reported.

Citizenship Minister Marlène Schiappa pointed out that the France’s National Assembly adopted a similar resolution in 2019.

“This is a resolution, it has no binding legal value, it does not change our law," Schiappa told AFP. However, "it can serve as a basis for the application of the law as well as serve for a basis for public policies."

She added that adopting the definition will enable “better identification, better characterization of anti-Semitism.”

The resolution was put forward by the Senate’s right wing majority and given support by the government. In the Senate, the measure was supported by a show of hands vote on Tuesday by all parties except for the communist CRCE, who refused to participate in the vote, and the ecologist party, who abstained.

The co-author of the motion, Bruno Retailleau, said that the definition in the resolution is "sufficiently broad to take into account all the new expressions of anti-Semitism" and "sufficiently strict to not to hurt freedom of opinion.”

The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism has been adopted by the EU parliament, along with 20 countries in Europe, and was supported by French President Emmanual Macron at the 2019 annual dinner of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) umbrella group.

In Frebruary 2021, the IHRA definition was adopted by the Paris City Council, becoming the first capital city in the world outside Israel to do so officially, according to a statement by the Israeli Embassy in France.