French president warns democracies are under threat as he sets out plan including emergency blocks on websites

Emmanuel Macron has vowed to introduce a law to ban fake news on the internet during French election campaigns.



The French president, who beat the far-right Marine Le Pen to win 2017’s election, said he wanted new legislation for social media platforms during election periods “in order to protect democracy”.

In his new year’s speech to journalists at the Élysée palace, Macron said he would shortly present the new law in order to fight the spread of fake news, which he said threatened liberal democracies.

New legislation for websites would include more transparency about sponsored content. Under the new law, websites would have to say who is financing them and the amount of money for sponsored content would be capped.

For fake news published during election seasons, an emergency legal action could allow authorities to remove that content or even block the website, Macron said. “If we want to protect liberal democracies, we must be strong and have clear rules,” he added.

He said France’s media watchdog, the CSA, would be empowered to fight against “any attempt at destabilisation” by TV stations controlled or influenced by foreign states.

Macron said he wanted to act against what he called “propaganda articulated by thousands of social media accounts”.

During the election campaign in spring 2017, Macron was the subject of various fake news stories about alleged offshore accounts. He filed a legal complaint after Le Pen, the Front National leader, referred to stories about him placing funds in an offshore account in the Bahamas.

At the time, Macron’s political movement, En Marche, called Le Pen’s statements a “textbook case” of fake news. The rumours about a Macron offshore account were suspected to have begun on a forum popular with supporters of the “alt-right” in the US. The rumours circulated hours before the TV debate between Macron and Le Pen. Documents were also posted online, which Macron’s camp said were an “outrageous falsification”.

A bogus website resembling the site of the Belgian newspaper Le Soir reported that Saudi Arabia was financing Macron’s campaign. Le Soir totally distanced itself from the report.

During the campaign, Macron had harsh words for Moscow, accusing Russia of following a “hybrid strategy combining military intimidation and an information war”. The Macron camp alleged that Russia had been engaged in disinformation efforts, and at one point refused accreditation to the Russian state-funded news outlets Sputnik and Russia Today, which it said were spreading Russian propaganda and fake news.

When the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, visited France just after the election, Macron used their joint press conference in Versailles to criticise Russian influence, saying Russia Today and Sputnik had engaged in spreading propaganda and fake news. “When media organs spread slanderous falsehoods, they are no longer journalists,” he said.

During the campaign, Macron also denied rumours that he was in a secret gay relationship outside his marriage to his wife, Brigitte.

Le Pen attacked Macron’s plan for a ban on fake news, tweeting that France was “muzzling its citizens”. She asked: “Who will decide if a piece of news is fake? Judges? The government?”