With the French presidential election fast approaching, the government is seeking to regain control over public opinion with a new bill presented by Aurore Bergé, the deputy minister for the fight against discrimination. Designed to combat racism and Holocaust denial, the bill aims to introduce new penalties of ineligibility linked to certain offences.
This is not the first time the government has addressed these issues. The ‘Yadan’ bill, sponsored by Macronist MP Caroline Yadan, aimed to strengthen the fight against certain contemporary manifestations of antisemitism, notably by creating new offences relating to calls for the destruction of a state or certain forms of implicit glorification of terrorism. However, the bill sparked fierce controversy, as it was clear that it risked further restricting freedom of expression and penalising certain positions taken on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Faced with the risk of a parliamentary deadlock, the bill was finally withdrawn from the National Assembly’s agenda in April 2026. The new draft presented by Bergé, which has just been forwarded to the Council of State and will be put to a vote by MPs on July 1st, incorporates some of its provisions.
“This text will send an absolutely essential signal of republicanism and harmony, one year ahead of the presidential election,” said Aurore Bergé, who believes that the current law on press freedom, dating from 1881, does not cover all contentious situations relating to freedom of expression.
With this new bill, “no one will be able to deny a crime against humanity,” she assured. The minister also reiterated the proposal, put forward by Emmanuel Macron, for a penalty of ineligibility for “the most serious offences, namely antisemitism, racism, Holocaust denial, and the glorification of war crimes and crimes against humanity.” The bill also provides for the possibility for magistrates to request “a committal order or an arrest warrant against repeat offenders of hate crimes” in order to prevent them from fleeing abroad.
The minister says she is very confident about the bill’s outcome: “I honestly cannot see what argument there could be for refusing to better protect victims and impose tougher penalties on perpetrators,” said Aurore Bergé, who claims to have observed a “consensus” among all political parties on the subject.
Behind this bill lies a whole host of organisations already summoned by the minister to track down ‘online hate’ and which make no secret of their progressive ideological commitment. If this bill passes, they would be able to bring civil proceedings in cases deemed to be offences of opinion. Jean-Yves Le Gallou, president of the Polémia Foundation, is concerned about the underlying implications. At a time when the courts are overwhelmed and cases of child sexual abuse are being swept under the carpet, can we really rejoice, as Bergé does in an interview with La Tribune Dimanche, that “many more cases of ‘crimes of opinion’ can be brought before the courts? ”
In addition to prosecution, one of the law’s objectives is to secure, where possible, “the immediate removal, delisting or blocking” of content deemed objectionable. The problem is that for several months now, the government has been adopting a policy of pre-emptive condemnation of potentially objectionable content, as demonstrated once again recently by the banning of a conference organised by the organisation Les Natifs on cultural identity, featuring the American academic Jared Taylor, on the grounds of “possible disturbances to public order.” The mere suspicion of dangerous content is now considered to be sufficient to lead to censorship.
Political influencer Pierre Sautarel, founder of the website fdesouche.com, is also alarmed by the extremely serious political consequences of the proposed Bergé law: it would be enough to have the remarks of right-wing candidates such as Bruno Retailleau or Jordan Bardella condemned to render them ineligible. Pessimistic, he concludes: “The Right is so submissive that it would still be capable of voting in favour of it.”
