The issue is a personal one for Macron. As a presidential candidate last spring, Macron faced since-debunked rumors that he had a secret offshore bank account in the Caribbean. His campaign also suffered a “massive, coordinated” cyberattack just 48 hours before the final round of the French presidential election. The hack, which resulted in the release of tens of thousands of internal emails and documents, was linked to a group with ties to the Russian government, though Moscow denied involvement in the hack. It wasn’t a denial Macron appeared to believe. During his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin just two weeks into his term, Macron used a joint news conference to blast Russian media outlets Russia Today and Sputnik as “agents of influence and propaganda,” which he accused of spreading “falsehoods about me and my campaign.”

“The smears against him during the election didn’t stop him [from] winning, but I think he wants to draw a red line and make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Rainbow Murray, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University in London, told me. “Despite concerns about freedom of expression, there’s also an underlying legitimacy in saying that voters should not be misled by verifiably false information at election time.”

France, like the United States and others, has laws that protect freedom of speech. In fact, Article 11 of the country’s Declaration of Human and Civic Rights guarantees that all citizens “may speak, write, print freely, except what is tantamount to the abuse of this liberty in the cases determined by Law.” Still, some critics fear the proposed law could represent a violation. Bruno Retailleau, a senior conservative senator, warned that “in a democracy, misinformation is better than state information,” adding that “only authoritarian regimes claim to control the truth.” Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front and Macron’s former presidential election opponent, called the proposal “very disturbing,” adding: “Who will decide if the information is false?”

The issue resonates with people both within and beyond France. The country certainly wasn’t the only one to battle the spread of misinformation during an important election campaign, and other countries, like Germany, have already pursued legislative efforts to combat the spread of false information. Still, vocalizing opposition to the proliferation of fake news is one thing—identifying it is another. It’s for this very reason that the European Commission announced in November the creation of a high-level group to advise on policy decisions focused on countering the spread of false information online. “[Macron] sees fake news as really entrenching and further dividing society,” Georgina Wright, a researcher with the European Programme at Chatham House, told me.“But the reality is there is no clear definition of fake news—and there lies the complexity.”