France’s Senate has approved a bill that was originally tabled as a means to make rioters pay for the damages they cause – but ended up with provisions that are meant to allow for faster removal of online content at the police’s behest, ban people from social media for committing protest-related offenses, allow the police to fly as many drones as they want equipped with cameras, and use AI to analyze footage from those drones, as well as from CCTV cameras.
All this was added to the “casseurs-payeurs” (rioters-pay) bill in the form of amendments, which senators approved on October 27 by 229 votes to 105. The bill was first submitted on September 16, and it had only five articles that made no mention of any of these issues.
The government’s use of the accelerated procedure means that after one reading in the National Assembly, the bill can go to a joint committee of both chambers.
All the quotes below are from the Senate’s record of the debate, translated from French.
“Social networks can contribute decisively to violence and damage, in particular through the dissemination of content calling for these offenses to be committed,” is how the government justified its amendment that was adopted with 219 votes to 115.
The amendment allows the administrative authority, rather than a judge, to order platforms and hosts to remove content that is seen as provoking crimes such as attacks on life, theft and destruction, where it is likely to cause a serious disturbance of public order.
If a host fails to remove such content within 24 hours, it will face six months in prison and a 150,000 euro fine, or up to two percent of its worldwide turnover for a company. The authority will also be able to have the site blocked and removed from search results.
The request goes to a designated reviewer, rather than a judge, before the content is removed.
The original filing of the amendment had a one-hour emergency procedure for content that calls for “an attack, for insurrection or for arming against the State” – but Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez pulled it in the chamber, saying, “I have just rectified my amendment so that we can secure the emergency procedure during the shuttle [between chambers], in view of risks regarding [EU-law] conformity and constitutionality.”
So this provision is expected to be back later in the legislative process.
Meanwhile, Nuñez explained that the authorities are “not talking about shutting social networks, but about using the Pharos mechanism to remove content, notably content calling for insurrection or for violence and looting.”
The socialists, ecologists, and others strongly criticized the move, with Marie-Pierre de La Gontrie saying that the wording of the amendment – “against provocation, even when not followed by effect, to the commission of offenses” – was so broad that it might as well target the whole Penal Code.
Thomas Dossus, an ecologist, saw “the Government’s perennial obsession: quickly censoring social networks.”
Anne Souyris, also an ecologist, said of the one-hour takedown provision that it “opens the door to administrative censorship.”
Centrist Loïc Hervé wanted to know how a call to insurrection would be defined in law, while another centrist, Catherine Morin-Desailly, said that the problem with the provision was “the absence of prior intervention by a judge.”
On October 22, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu wrote to the country’s four mobile operators, asking them to be ready to block Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram, and have “the ability to temporarily suspend access to these services in the event of a recurrence of urban violence.”
That block did not happen – but the idea of using the Pharos unit, which is in charge of receiving online reports of illegal content and having it removed, was not abandoned.
Judges can already suspend social media accounts of people convicted of certain crimes for up to six months, or a year if they are repeat offenders. The Senate added three more crimes to this list: organizing an undeclared or banned demonstration, inciting an armed gathering, and inciting rebellion.
Fabien Gay of the communist party warned that “an organizer who announced a demonstration that the prefecture later bans could be penalized!”
The bill also lifts the cap on the number of camera drones that can be flown by the police at the same time in each département – the previous limit was between 40 and 100. The police can now film demonstrations and their surroundings on a prosecutor’s written order.
Rapporteur David Margueritte said that administrative drones “are no longer limited in number.”
Another provision that was approved is the use of algorithms to analyze footage from CCTV and drones at demonstrations in real time, and alert “the competent security services” of “predetermined events.”
This is an extension of a trial that was first introduced in the 2023 Olympics law, and was meant to last until March 31, 2025. It was first extended to December 31, 2027, and now to December 31, 2030.
Nuñez himself appeared to be lukewarm about this particular provision, saying that it “does not seem indispensable to me” – but the Senate still adopted it.
The bill also widens the scope of a ban on covering one’s face at or near a demonstration, making it an offence at any protest on a public road, rather than only where disorder occurs or is likely. The penalty is one year in prison and a 15,000 euro fine.
Gay said that at peaceful demonstrations people wear masks to protect themselves from tear gas.
The whole of the left in the Senate voted against the bill, while the right and those aligned with the National Rally supported it.
While the government and parliament are rushing to give the police more powers, the Constitutional Council, France’s top court, in 2020 struck down a one-hour removal rule in the Avia law, finding it an infringement of free expression “that is not appropriate, necessary and proportionate to the aim pursued.”
In 2025, the Conseil d’État found that the 2024 TikTok block in New Caledonia was illegal.
France’s National Assembly is now to consider the bill, that was originally about making rioters pay for broken windows and damaged property, but turned into a vehicle for ushering in more censorship and surveillance powers.
