FRENCH PRESIDENT Nicolas Sarkozy has challenged Google’s plans to digitise the world’s classic books by declaring that he will not allow his country to be stripped of its literary heritage for any company’s benefit.

Addressing concerns about Google’s aim of scanning out-of-copyright titles and providing them in searchable form online, Mr Sarkozy said that France would increase funding for its own digitisation project. “We won’t let ourselves be stripped of our heritage for the benefit of a big company, no matter how friendly, big or American it is,” he said.

Speaking at a public meeting in Alsace, he said France’s national digitisation project – Gallica – would be one of the projects financed by a national loan, which is due to inject billions of euro into strategic investments next year.

“We are not going to be stripped of what generations and generations have produced in the French language, just because we weren’t capable of funding our own digitisation project,” he said.

It is not the first time that France has challenged Google. In 2005, French and German leaders announced that they would work together to develop a multimedia search engine called Quaero (Latin for “I search“) that many saw as a direct attack on the American firm. Progress has been slow on the project due to lack of funds.

The president’s remarks came the day after his culture minister, Frédéric Mitterrand, told Google’s vice-president, David Drummond, of France’s “concern” about the company’s project. Mr Mitterrand, a champion of the state-funded programme, said that although he was not hostile to the idea of a public-private partnership on book-scanning, he was conscious of “the risks inherent in such co-operation”.

Marc Tessier, a former president of France Télévision who is leading France’s own book-scanning venture, is due to report next week on the possibility of a partnership with a private company.

Google has already scanned thousands of French works still under copyright, and a verdict is expected next week in a case brought against the company by France’s third largest publisher, Le Seuil.

It accused Google of illegally copying, storing and publishing thousands of its works and is seeking €15 million in damages.

Warning that it was important for publishing to avoid the sort of damage that illegal downloads have caused to the music and film industries, French prime minister François Fillon last month established a commission to look at how the sector can adapt.

In an open letter, Mr Fillon listed several possible strategies, including a project to scan the contents of Europe’s libraries; applying internet piracy laws to the publishing sector; asking publishers to propose ways of policing download; and developing the market for legal digital books.

Mr Fillon said France would not accept another cultural industry being “threatened by looting”.

France’s government has proposed some of the world’s strictest online piracy legislation, and in September parliament approved a law that will allow authorities to disconnect repeat illegal downloaders.