In an effort to extract fresh revenue from foreign tech companies and narrow a yawning budget deficit, the French Socialist Party (PS) has proposed a fiscal mechanism without precedent in modern telecommunications: Taxing the internet by the unit of data transferred.
During budget debates in the Palais Bourbon, an amendment introduced by the Socialist parliamentary group passed through the National Assembly.
The text would levy a flat fee of €0.055 per gigabyte of data transmitted across the French network, aiming directly at high-bandwidth entertainment, video streaming and digital gaming.
Promoted by its sponsors as an overdue contribution to national infrastructure and digital sovereignty, the proposal has drawn sharp criticism across the European tech sector, gaming industry and legal establishment.
Opponents argue the plan rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of internet architecture that would raise household bills, harm European firms and violate European Union market rules.
The measure was adopted not through broad political consensus, but during a thinly attended sitting of the National Assembly on October 30.
Tabled by Socialist deputy Laurent Lhardit as part of the 2027 finance bill, the amendment passed by a margin of 11 votes to 10, with 14 abstentions. Of the 577 deputies in the chamber, 35 took part in the division.
Both the French Government and the Finance Committee’s general rapporteur, Philippe Juvin of Les Républicains (LR), urged the assembly to reject the text. The committee had already thrown out an earlier version of the amendment at the start of October.
In an episode that underscored the confusion surrounding the vote, the chairman of the Finance Committee, Éric Coquerel of the left-wing La France Insoumise (LFI), admitted on X on October 31 that he and a fellow LFI deputy had pressed the wrong voting key.
Had the pair abstained, as four other LFI deputies did, the amendment would have fallen by nine votes to 10. Coquerel argued the measure would end up being paid by users rather than by the platforms.
Despite its initial passage, the proposal is unlikely to reach the statute book in its current form.
Deputies are due to vote on November 3 on the revenue section of the budget, without which none of their amendments would survive. Should it fall, the government’s original text would go to the Senate.
It faces near-certain rejection in the Senate, where centre-right and conservative parties hold a majority, and the executive retains multiple constitutional mechanisms to remove the clause before the budget receives final sign-off. These include a second deliberation in the Assembly or Article 49.3 of the Constitution, which allows the government to adopt a budget without a vote.
The amendment’s authors estimate it would collect €10 billion annually by requiring content providers to pay the state 5.5 euro cents for every gigabyte delivered to French end-users.
Domestic telecommunications operators, monitored by the telecoms regulator Arcep, would be required to measure incoming volumes, identify originators and report anonymised, consolidated figures to the tax authorities.
Unlike the “fair share” fees Europe’s telecoms operators have long sought from content providers, a debate revived in Brussels by the European Commission’s draft Digital Networks Act, the proceeds would go to the French treasury rather than to the operators.
To prevent the total bill from exceeding corporate capacities, the amendment introduces a ceiling, limiting liability to either 15 per cent of a provider’s French revenue or 2 per cent of its global turnover.
While the rhetoric surrounding the bill focuses on Silicon Valley conglomerates such as Netflix, Alphabet, Meta and Amazon, the mathematical reality of modern bandwidth consumption would trigger massive liabilities across the entertainment sector.
According to the amendment’s explanatory memorandum, Google, Meta, Amazon, Netflix and content delivery network Akamai carry about half of French internet traffic.
An hour of film streamed in 4K resolution requires roughly seven gigabytes of data transfer, representing an underlying levy of approximately €0.38 per hour.
For a household watching two high-definition films each evening, the accrued monthly data tax would approach €20, surpassing the price of the base subscription itself.
Arcep figures put average consumption in early 2026 at 267 gigabytes per fixed connection per month, equivalent to a theoretical levy of about €14.70, according to MacGeneration.
Video gaming represents an even more acute pressure point.
Major contemporary releases, such as Call of Duty or upcoming blockbusters, regularly demand file downloads ranging between 120 and 200 gigabytes.
A standard 150-gigabyte installation would attract an immediate tax of €8.25.
Once subsequent patches, online multiplayer synchronisation and asset updates are factored in, the cumulative state levy on a single title would routinely outstrip the profit margin of the publishing house.
Industry representatives and economists maintain that the tax cannot operate without producing severe unintended consequences for consumers, network operations and international trade relations.
According to critics, tax incidence dictates that platforms would not absorb the cost internally. Services would either pass the levy directly to French consumers through geographical price adjustments, withdraw high-bitrate streaming tiers in the French market or introduce delivery surcharges on digital downloads via storefronts like Steam, PlayStation Network and Xbox.
Juvin warned deputies that the US tech giants could pass the cost on to advertisers.
Because lower-income households spend a higher proportion of their leisure time on digital media, the levy functions in practice as a regressive consumption duty.
The text also threatens European and domestic operators.
While targeted at American multinationals, any traffic-based rule would apply to domestic cloud infrastructure providers, European indie game studios and regional news platforms that distribute high-definition content to French IP addresses.
Public action and accounts minister David Amiel told deputies that about half of the expected yield would fall on smaller content providers, French ones among them. Lhardit has maintained that the tax “will be paid by content providers, first and foremost by foreign platforms”.
Finally, the measure risks triggering a fresh diplomatic dispute with Washington and further straining transatlantic relations.
When France introduced its 3 per cent digital services tax on turnover in July 2019, the United States responded with threats of retaliatory tariffs under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.
On June 15 this year, hours before the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, southeast France, US President Donald Trump threatened 100 per cent tariffs on French wine and champagne unless Paris scrapped that tax.
A blunt tariff on data transmission would attract similar legal challenges before the European Court of Justice as an unlawful barrier to the internal market, alongside international trade disputes over discriminatory market access.
