France Constitutional Council Rulings Shape 2027 Campaign

France's Constitutional Council delivered two decisions this week that will shape the presidential campaign more than many party manifestos. It allowed the assisted-dying law to proceed, subject to safeguards for private institutions, adults under legal protection and pharmacists who invoke conscience. It also struck down the blanket social-media ban for children under 15, finding a disproportionate restriction on expression and inadequate safeguards around age verification and privacy. One ruling opened a contested right; the other closed a popular shortcut.

The contrast is a useful measure of what the Council is being asked to do. Parliament can declare an objective, but judges must decide whether the means survive constitutional scrutiny. President Emmanuel Macron is expected to promulgate the assisted-dying law after implementing decrees are prepared. On social media, he asked Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu for a revised measure before spring 2027, while Gabriel Attal proposed a referendum under Article 11. The referendum call turns a legal defect into a campaign instrument: rather than repair proportionality and privacy protections, a candidate can ask voters to overrule the appearance of judicial obstruction.

France's other referee, Viginum, faces the opposite problem. The agency linked campaigns against Attal, Édouard Philippe and Raphaël Glucksmann to the pro-Russian Storm-1516 network associated with the GRU. It also tracked an Israeli-linked campaign against LFI figures and a separate Azerbaijani operation aimed at overseas territories. The reach of several operations was limited. Viginum advised candidates not to publicise them because denunciation can supply the audience that manipulators failed to build themselves. Le Monde noted the dilemma clearly: a politician targeted by a foreign actor has an incentive to advertise the attack as proof of importance and patriotism, even when doing so improves the operation's distribution.

That advice is already political. Attal and Glucksmann have used alleged Russian interference to define their positions against Moscow, while opponents can describe official warnings as selective protection. Repeated events since early August show that the threat is no longer a single viral falsehood but a contest over who gets to certify authenticity. Viginum must disclose enough evidence to earn trust without publishing a playbook or becoming the campaign's arbiter of acceptable speech. Its institutional credibility will depend on applying the same evidentiary threshold to Russian, Israeli, Azerbaijani and domestic networks.

A cyberattack on the tax administration made trust more concrete. Data belonging to 678,000 people and businesses was exposed, including names, income details and tax rates. The stolen information did not permit direct access to secure accounts, but it creates material for convincing fraud and identity theft. The breach followed incidents at La Poste, France Travail and the vehicle-document agency ANTS, prompting a €200 million emergency cybersecurity plan. A government asking voters to rely on its judgement about foreign information must also show it can protect the records citizens are legally required to provide.

The economic context makes institutional disputes harder to contain. Unemployment rose to 8.3 percent in the second quarter, the highest since 2020, and youth unemployment reached 21.6 percent. Lecornu attributed part of the increase to measurement changes and the Hormuz energy shock; former prime minister Philippe blamed policy failure and defended his supply-side record. OECD analysis has warned that weaker hiring and reduced apprenticeship support leave younger workers particularly exposed. The disagreement will not be resolved by arguing over the headline rate if order books remain weak and layoffs accelerate.

France is therefore entering 2027 with institutions that cannot remain invisible. The Council will be blamed for rights it recognises and prohibitions it rejects. Viginum will be judged both for warnings it issues and campaigns it declines to amplify. Tax administrators will be measured by whether the next breach is prevented rather than whether compensation is promised. The next useful signals are a legally narrower social-media bill, transparent criteria for interference attribution, individual notification after the DGFiP breach and hiring data that separates statistical changes from real job loss. The referees cannot avoid the campaign, but they can still refuse to become contestants.