France's Gigabyte Tax Passes Assembly by One Vote, Targets Streaming

A tax on the data that big tech platforms send to French internet subscribers cleared its first hurdle in the National Assembly on Friday, 30 October. An amendment by MP Laurent Lhardit to the 2027 budget passed by 11 votes to 10 in first reading, with only 35 deputies in the chamber.

The vote came despite opposition from both the budget rapporteur general and the government, who had urged rejection minutes earlier. The finance committee had already rejected the measure on 9 October.

How the tax would work

The text creates a levy on data flows issued by content providers and paid by them. Each gigabyte sent to a French subscriber would cost the sender €0.055. Orange, Free, Bouygues Telecom and SFR would have to report volumes in anonymised, consolidated form under the supervision of regulator Arcep. Content cached with delivery networks such as Akamai would count too.

The explanatory memo names Google, Meta, Amazon, Netflix and Akamai, which together account for half of the traffic measured by Arcep. Lhardit puts the expected yield at €10 billion a year. Two caps, 15% of French revenue or 2% of global revenue, are meant to protect sectors that send heavy traffic relative to their income, notably video on demand and gaming.

Objections and next steps

Philippe Juvin, the budget rapporteur general, argued the platforms would pass the cost on to advertisers. Minister David Amiel said the system would be hard to enforce without flow sensors and that half the revenue, €5 billion, would fall on smaller content providers, including French ones. Lhardit countered that carrying TF1's five channels on operator boxes would mean a tax of €200,000 to €300,000.

For consumers, 100 GB of video a month would carry €5.50 in tax, which services could pass on through prices or advertising. Unlike the Socialist programme, which earmarked €0.10 per gigabyte for network funding, this version sends the money to the state budget.

The amendment must still survive the vote on the revenue part of the budget. The right-leaning Senate is unlikely to back it, and a possible use of the 49.3 constitutional procedure would let the government strip it from the final text.