Overview
- The National Assembly voted narrowly to add a 5.5 euro‑cent per gigabyte charge to the 2027 budget, a measure passed by an 11–10 margin in a late‑October sitting.
- The draft targets large content platforms such as Netflix, Amazon, Meta and Google and aims to raise about €10 billion a year with caps of 15% of France revenue or 2% of global revenue.
- Under the proposal internet providers like Orange would measure anonymized traffic and report quarterly volumes plus company identifiers to the tax authority to calculate the levy.
- The French government and the Senate oppose the draft, and analysts expect the Senate to reject or substantially amend it before the measure becomes law.
- Consumer groups and open‑source developers warn the tax could be passed to users, reduce streaming quality, and accidentally hit small or noncommercial projects such as VLC because the bill currently lacks clear size thresholds.