France’s National Assembly has narrowly voted to create a gigabyte tax of €0.055 on data delivered to internet users across the country, passing an amendment to the 2027 national budget despite opposition from the French government and parliament’s finance committee.
Key points
- French lawmakers backed a budget amendment charging content providers €0.055 per gigabyte of data sent to domestic subscribers.
- The Socialist sponsors estimate the levy would raise €10bn a year from streaming services, tech platforms and content delivery networks.
- The measure passed by 11 votes to 10 with 14 abstentions during a sparsely attended session.
- Ministers and tech organisations warn the rules threaten local software developers and face likely rejection in the French Senate.
How the data levy was passed
Lawmakers approved the proposal on Friday during debates on the 2027 state budget. The vote finished 11 in favour and 10 against, with 14 members abstaining, according to the official record of the session.
The measure was tabled by Socialist Party deputies who argue that high-bandwidth online services place heavy demands on physical infrastructure without paying a fair share towards public finances. Laurent Lhardit, the member of parliament who drafted the amendment, told the chamber that the measure would generate roughly €10bn annually for the French state.
Government ministers urged parliament to reject the clause. Both the executive and the assembly’s finance committee warned that the tax had not been assessed for technical feasibility or economic fallout before the vote took place.
How the gigabyte tax would work
Under the text of the amendment, internet service providers would be required to measure the volume of incoming data traffic reaching their subscribers. Telecoms operators would log which company originated the transmission and report quarterly totals directly to tax authorities.
The measurement regime would operate under the oversight of Arcep, the French telecoms regulator. To address privacy objections, the legislation explicitly forbids operators from inspecting or recording the contents of any packets or monitoring where individual users browse.
Traffic routed through content delivery networks, which cache files on local servers to improve loading times, would be counted when data leaves the distribution network towards the end user. To prevent unlimited liabilities, the amendment caps the tax charge at either 15% of a provider’s French revenue or 2% of its worldwide annual turnover.
The sponsors based their €10bn revenue estimate on Arcep research showing that French consumers receive about 200bn gigabytes of internet traffic each year. The explanatory statement attached to the amendment states that five foreign companies, namely Google, Meta, Amazon, Netflix and Akamai, generate around half of that total volume.
Opposition from ministers and French tech
David Amiel, the minister for public accounts, spoke against the plan in the assembly. He told members that enforcing the levy would require deep network inspection sensors or monitoring software installed directly on consumer hardware.
Amiel also challenged the assumption that only Silicon Valley companies would pay the bill. Based on the authors’ calculations, half of the €10bn burden would fall on smaller internet services and regional hosting providers, many of them based in France rather than the United States.
Philippe Juvin, the general rapporteur for the assembly’s finance committee, cautioned that consumer internet platforms would simply recoup the expenditure elsewhere. Juvin told the chamber that large tech companies would raise advertising rates or adjust subscription pricing to offset network fees.
Lhardit rejected those warnings during the debate. “I fail to see how a tax can be passed on to users of Facebook, Instagram or TikTok, since these services are free,” he said.
Software organisations quickly challenged that assessment. VideoLAN, the French non-profit foundation that develops the open-source VLC media player, stated that distributing its installer files would make it liable under the rules. The group, whose player has recorded over six billion downloads worldwide, said the fee would cost it more than €1m each year.
International friction and the next steps
The budget proposal arrives amid continuing international tension over European digital taxation. In June, US President Donald Trump threatened 100% tariffs against countries enforcing unilateral levies on American technology companies.
Amiel reminded lawmakers that France already collects a dedicated digital services tax on platform turnover and relies on European Union antitrust enforcement to penalise market abuses. France argues that fines collected by Brussels should count towards reducing national contributions to the EU budget.
The vote does not guarantee that the charge will take effect on 1 January. The budget bill moves next to the French Senate, where the conservative Les Républicains party holds a majority and is expected to strip the measure out of the draft.
Even if the bill returns to the National Assembly, prime ministers frequently rely on constitutional mechanisms to pass national budgets without a line-by-line vote on every amendment. If the government uses those powers, ministers can submit their own final compromise text, leaving the traffic fee off the statute book.
