The European court of human rights has condemned France over its refusal to repatriate French women who travelled to Syria with their partners to join Islamic State and are currently being held with their children at Kurdish-run prison camps.

The ruling will be studied closely by other countries who still have citizens detained in camps in north-eastern Syria, including the UK.

The Strasbourg-based court - which is not a body of the European Union - ruled that Paris must swiftly re-examine requests made by the parents of the two women that they should be allowed to return to France with the children they gave birth to in Syria. The judges found that France's refusal to repatriate the women and children was in violation of the right of a person to "enter the territory of the state of which they are a national".

The ruling did not grant a general right to repatriation, but said there should be safeguards against any potentially "arbitrary" decision-making. It said an independent body should be able to examine decisions made about individuals. France had not provided sufficient reviews to ensure that its refusal to repatriate was not arbitrary. France must now re-examine the cases of the women and their children and provide guarantees on its decision-making process.

Macron had been stonewalling on this issue for several years, but saw this decision coming, and repatriated a first batch of 51 mothers and children in July. There are about 350 French citizens left in Kurdish-run Syrian camps.

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