The French government must redraft its flagship online child-protection law after the country’s highest constitutional authority ruled on 14th August that a ban on social media access for children under 15 breached freedom of expression and failed to protect users’ privacy, dealing a setback to one of President Emmanuel Macron’s signature reforms.
The Constitutional Council struck down Article 1 of the legislation, which had been due to take effect on 1st September. The measure would have barred children younger than 15 from opening a social media account, required platforms to close existing under-15 accounts within four months, and obliged services to introduce age verification approved by France’s privacy regulator.
What the court found
The Council ruled that the ban was neither appropriate, necessary nor proportionate to the freedom of expression and communication of those affected, and that its age-verification requirements posed a wider threat to privacy by forcing every user to prove their age.
“By prohibiting minors under the age of fifteen from accessing certain online services, the law inherently requires every person, even an adult, to prove their age before accessing them,” the Constitutional Council said. It added that, by failing to specify the conditions and limits under which such proof must be provided, lawmakers had not established the legal safeguards necessary to ensure compliance.
The judges accepted that the state may restrict minors’ access online to shield them from addiction, harassment, pornography and fraud. The problem, they found, lay in a blanket prohibition that swept across a broad category of services without distinguishing between their functions or the risks each posed.
Macron orders a rewrite
Macron has instructed Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu to rework the draft to address the Council’s objections, the Élysée said, adding that the president had no intention of abandoning the policy. The president is determined for a revised law to take effect before spring 2027, when France holds a presidential election in which he cannot stand for a third term.
The reform has been a personal priority for Macron, who in April urged teenagers to switch off their devices and read in order to become better citizens. He has repeatedly linked social media to violence among young people and has pushed for common rules at European Union level.
First in Europe to follow Australia
Approved by parliament in July, the law would have made France the first country in Europe to introduce such a restriction, following Australia, whose world-first ban on under-16s using platforms including Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube came into force in December.
The same ruling upheld a separate law establishing a right to assisted dying for adults with an incurable condition, which the Élysée welcomed as a major social reform of Macron’s second term. France is set to join the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Canada in permitting the practice under strict conditions.
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