France's top judicial body has formally recognized the nation's role in deporting Jews to Nazi death camps during the Holocaust — but effectively ruled out any more reparations for the deportees or their families.

Jewish groups welcomed the Feb. 16 ruling by the Council of State, the clearest legal acknowledgment to date of France's role in the Holocaust.

Nearly 70 years ago, the Vichy government helped deport some 76,000 people — including 11,000 children — from Nazi-occupied France to concentration camps during the war. Fewer than 3,000 returned alive.

The council issued a statement that legally formalized a historic gesture by President Jacques Chirac in 1995, when he became the first French leader to say the nation bore responsibility for the deportation of Jews in wartime France. Chirac broke with the official position that France's Vichy regime was not synonymous with the French state.