The French are now free to offend their president if they so choose after parliament lifted an age-old ban on insulting the head of state.

The French are now free to offend their president if they so choose after parliament lifted an age-old ban on insulting the head of state.

Under the amended law, the president will now have to go to court if he or she feels offended and prove there was defamation, in a much more drawn-out and complicated process.

France's upper house Senate on Thursday approved a move to strike the offense of "insulting the head of state" from the statute books, following a similar move by the lower house National Assembly two days earlier.

The controversial offense was famously used in 2008 against a man who held up a banner to then-president Nicolas Sarkozy that read: "Get lost, asshole."

He was immediately detained, convicted of causing offense and fined 30 Euros ($40) for insulting the French leader, in a move that the European Court of Human Rights later said violated freedom of expression.

The offense was put in place in the 1881 law governing freedom of the press.