[ Breaking ] France: Total Strike-Down of the Law Banning Social Media for Under-15s

Once again, we were right not to join the chorus of independent-media mourners predicting the death of democracy.

We said it, and we were right. The law meant to protect minors by banning social media access for under-15s is unconstitutional and incompatible with France's international commitments. And we could say so with confidence not because we were consulting talking-head "experts," but because at the very top of the state apparatus, people still talk to us.

Our colleagues in the independent press had a tidy rebuttal ready: Ferrand, Macron’s crony, chairs the Constitutional Council, so Macron controls it — the law would sail through. It’s an argument that betrays a basic ignorance of French institutions and a refusal to look reality in the eye when reality is inconvenient. In fact, it’s the Conseil d’Etat, France’s highest administrative court — not the Élysée — that runs the Constitutional Council’s general secretariat. And the senior judiciary, whether judicial or administrative, has for years stopped tolerating the disorder Macron stirs up for cheap political ends, or the executive’s repeated assaults on legal and institutional order.

Macron’s instruction to rewrite a “legally solid” version of a text whose very spirit is unconstitutional is never going to succeed.

One should never place blind trust in the courts — that’s exactly why three levels of jurisdiction exist. But the judiciary knows how to fiercely defend its own turf. And what the executive has been trying to seize since 2017 is nothing less than the judiciary’s monopoly on policing civil liberties — which would effectively spell the end of an independent judiciary. This time, as when it struck down the Avia law back in 2020, the courts didn’t let it happen.

It’s time to stop manufacturing a permanent climate of fear for the sake of ratings, the way mainstream media do. Screaming “censorship” while passing the donation plate is starting to look, more than ever, like a racket.