The French president Emmanuel Macron has put into effect an amendment of French Polynesia's autonomy statute.
Emmanuel Macron Photo: AP Photo / Michel Euler
The signing took place in Paris in the presence of the French Polynesian president Edouard Fritch, who returned to the French capital with the territory's top leaders for a range of meetings.
The amendment was approved by the French Senate and the National Assembly in May, after the two branches of the legislature revised the wording marking French Polynesia's role in the French military's development.
The original text updating the autonomy statute referred to French Polynesia having contributed to France being able to obtain a nuclear deterrent thanks to its nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific.
However, criticism of the wording prompted the legislature to acknowledge in a revised text that French Polynesia was made to contribute to the weapons testing regime.
The constitutional court, however, ruled last month that the acknowledgment could not be enshrined in the organic law but had to be retained in a normal law.
Mr Fritch says Mr Macron regretted this downgrading but noted it was still in the law.