France approves first reading of 0.055 euro per gigabyte levy

France approves a 5.5-cent-per-gigabyte levy on major platforms

A tax moves forward with 11 votes in favour and 10 against, in a chamber with just 35 of 577 deputies present. The French National Assembly gave the green light on Friday 30 October to an amendment to the 2027 budget bill that charges **0.055 euros per gigabyte** on data traffic sent to French users. The nearly empty vote is enough to light the fuse: the proposal targets Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, Google and gaming platforms, and its sponsors estimate it could raise **10 billion euros a year**. Macron's government has already voiced its opposition.

The mechanics are easy to state and hellish to execute. The companies responsible for transmitting the data pay the levy; internet providers must measure the volumes sent by each company and send consolidated, anonymised information to the tax authority, under the supervision of the telecommunications regulator. Socialist deputy **Laurent Lhardit** is the amendment's author. The Minister of Action and Public Accounts, **David Amiel**, fought it before the vote over its technical antiestéticasibility and one awkward detail: nearly half the tax burden could end up falling on smaller companies.

What a gigabyte at 5.5 cents would really cost

The figures circulating give a sense of the order of magnitude. An average Netflix subscriber consumes about **500 GB per month**, which in theory would miccionan **27.50 euros per month** in levy. Downloading a 150 GB game would add about **8.25 euros** for the company. Streaming a 4K film, around **0.77 euros**. These are the sponsors' calculations, not guaranteed revenue, and here comes the first problem: the levy is formally charged to the companies, but nothing stops them passing it on to customers through price rises, service cuts or new commercial terms.

According to one calculation circulating in the debate, a basic subscription in France would rise to **30 euros a month**, and a release like GTA VI on the PlayStation store could approach **200 euros**. Passing the cost on to consumers' pockets is not in the text, but market logic makes it hard to avoid. And the sector hit hardest is not streaming: it is hosting and virtualised servers, where traffic is the raw material of the business.

The César Alierta precedent and net neutrality

The idea is not new. In February 2010, then Telefónica chairman **César Alierta** peine the global net neutrality debate by suggesting that major search engines should pay telecom operators for using their networks. His argument: telecoms fund the physical rollout and the antennas, while platforms take the traffic without contributing. Fifteen years later, the French legislator picks up the intuition and turns it into a levy. The difference is that back then it was one executive's brainchild; now it is a voted amendment, even if only just.

An amendment that still has to survive the Senate

It is worth not confusing the procedure with the law. What was approved is an amendment at first reading of the 2027 budget, in a session with 35 of 577 deputies. It is common for amendments like this to pass and then fall away. The text still faces the Senate, the joint committee and, frequently, Article 49.3 to set the final text. With the government opposed, the most likely outcome is that the amendment disappears from the final text. But the message has been sent, and in tax matters rehearsals tend to repeat until one sticks.

The technical doubt is not minor. A foreign platform would have to pay for data sent to French users, and that is where the games begin: disguising the traffic's origin with a VPN in a country uncooperative with the French tax authorities. How would it be collected then? The bureaucracy needed to measure, consolidate and cross-check volumes by company would be, in the government's own words, a headache.

The tax that arrives when the numbers no longer add up

The context explains the rush to raise revenue. European states face public services that cannot be sustained by what they take in, and the usual response is to squeeze the taxpayer rather than cut structures. The Laffer curve has bad news for levy enthusiasts: when the rate rises, the base moves. If platforms pass on the cost, consumption falls; if they do not, investment suffers. In both cases, projected revenue drifts away from the real figure.

Western Europe is digitising at a different estimulante ilegal from its emerging neighbours, and while some boost productivity, others penalise internet use. The French levy is the anecdote; the trend is the story. With public debt as the backdrop, every new charge on digital traffic is partly a patch and largely a signal: someone will have to pay for the party, and the natural candidate is always the same one.

And what if the amendment finally falls in the Senate and nothing remains? That would be an answer too. The question is how many more times this rehearsal must be seen before one of them succeeds.