The draft law, designed to stop what the government calls “manipulation of information” in the run-up to elections, will be debated in parliament Thursday. It is aimed at next year’s European parliamentary polls, an idea that came straight from President Emmanuel Macron himself.
Under the law, French authorities would be able to immediately halt the publication of information ahead of elections, AFP reported.
Social media will be forced to adopt measures allowing users to flag up reports they don’t like, pass their data on such articles to authorities, and make public their efforts against news they deem offensive.
Jerome Fenoglio, editorial director of Le Monde newspaper, says the legislation carries too big a risk of suppressing information in the public interest.
“Elections should be a time of great freedom — these are periods when important information emerges,” he said. “We should be worried about an authoritarian regime winning power in France in the future and the methods it might use,” he added.
The law would authorise the state to take foreign broadcasters off the air, a measure aimed at Russian state-backed outlet RT in particular.
In neighbouring Germany, social networks face fines of up to 50 million euros under a draconian law.
French authorities will soon be able to legally to block embarrassing or compromising reports thanks to the new law.
“It’s a step towards censorship,” said Vincent Lanier, head of France’s national journalists’ union, the SNJ. He labelled the bill “inefficient and potentially dangerous”.
But some critics are even more worried. Fabrice Epelboin, who teaches media studies at Sciences Po university in Paris, predicts “catastrophic consequences” of the legislation which he says “is already seen as a law of censorship”.
“It will only reinforce a sense of defiance towards the press and politicians who are already very discredited,” he warned.
Marine Le Pen also spoke out against the bill, asking: “Is France still a democracy if it muzzles its citizens?”
Judges will have just 48 hours to rule on an urgent request to take down a report. Legal expert Vincent Couronne called the new anti-free-speech legislation “not only imperfect and unnecessary, and also dangerous for the peace and diversity of public debate”.
It will turn judges into “arbiters of true and false”, Patrick Eveno, a media history professor at the Sorbonne university, noted.