France’s Assembly adopted an amendment proposing a €0.055-per-GB levy

France’s National Assembly adopted amendment I-1358 on October 30, 2026, proposing a levy of €0.055 per gigabyte of data sent to French internet users. The vote was 11–10, with 14 abstentions, during first-reading consideration of the 2027 finance bill. It adopted the amendment, not the levy itself, the Assembly’s vote record shows.

Who would pay under the proposal

Amendment I-1358 would make the data sender, such as a content provider, liable for the proposed charge. Internet service providers (ISPs) would measure traffic and submit reports; subscribers are not named as liable parties. The proposed rate is €0.055 per GB sent to customers of French ISPs. The amendment text also describes a maximum tied to 15% of a sender’s French turnover or 2% of its total turnover.

What ISPs would measure and report

The proposed reports would include the sender’s identity, its Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) registration number and the volume of data. ISPs would send consolidated, anonymized totals quarterly to France’s tax administration, the Direction générale des Finances publiques (DGFiP), under the proposed oversight of Arcep, the country’s communications regulator.

The amendment says records of the data’s content or destination could not be required. It leaves technical details of the measurement process to a later decree.

How the amendment counts CDN traffic

A content delivery network (CDN) stores copies of content closer to users. For a sender using a CDN, the amendment defines the relevant volume as the sum of flows leaving that network. In other words, the proposed calculation counts outgoing CDN traffic rather than treating the use of a CDN as removing those transfers from the measure.

Proposed payment timing and revenue estimates

For groups without an entity established in France, the amendment proposes a DGFiP tax notice by January 30 and payment in euros by March 30 of the year after the data was sent. Groups with a French-established entity would pay under the proposed corporation-tax procedures.

The amendment’s explanatory grounds estimate 200 billion GB of annual traffic and €10 billion in annual revenue. Both figures are the sponsors’ estimates, not collected traffic or tax receipts. The amendment text sets out those estimates alongside the proposed rate and collection rules.

Objections raised in the Assembly debate

David Amiel, France’s minister for Public Action and Accounts, opposed the amendment, citing measurement concerns and estimating that smaller content providers, including French providers, could bear about half of the proposed levy’s burden. Philippe Juvin, general rapporteur of the Assembly’s Finance Committee, also opposed it and warned that platforms might pass costs on to advertisers. Both positions are recorded in the Assembly’s debate transcript.