FR-1
Both chambers adopted the joint-committee compromise on 21 July 2026.
French Senate — legislative recordParliamentary adoption is not promulgation or entry into force.Parliament adopted an under-15 restriction on 21 July. The Constitutional Council struck it down on 14 August on freedom-of-expression and privacy grounds. The rest of the law was promulgated; a redraft is the President’s stated ambition, not yet a bill.
← European situation: social-media age limits
France’s National Assembly and Senate adopted the same compromise on 21 July. Parliament described the bill as definitively adopted.FR-1
That step beyond proposal did not survive constitutional review. Two groups of more than 60 deputies referred the text to the Constitutional Council on 23 and 24 JulyFR-2; on 14 August 2026 the Council declared Article 1 — the under-15 access restriction itself — contrary to the Constitution, in its entirety, before it took effect.FR-8
Decision n° 2026-911 DC censured Article 1 on two grounds. First, a blanket prohibition applied without regard to an individual minor’s situation or to the risk profile of a specific service was not necessary, appropriate or proportionate to the aim pursued — a disproportionate restriction on freedom of expression and communication. Second, the law required age verification but did not fix the conditions and limits under which that proof had to be provided, so it failed to establish the legal safeguards the right to privacy requires.FR-9
The Council did not hold that protecting minors online is itself unconstitutional. It recognised child protection and preventing harm to public order as legitimate aims capable of justifying limits on access — the defect was in how Article 1 was drafted, not in the underlying policy goal. Nor did the Council rule on the law’s other provisions: it raised no question of its own motion about them, so they are unexamined by this decision, not affirmatively upheld by it.FR-10
The struck-down Article 1 would have prohibited under-15s from accessing covered online social-network services, with specified exclusions including online encyclopaedias and certain educational, scientific and open-source services.FR-3It stated a 1 September 2026 commencement date and gave platforms four further months to address accounts created before commencement — a date that cannot now arrive under this Article.FR-4The design would have had Arcom report suspected breaches to the competent authorities under EU law.FR-7All three describe the censured text for the historical record, not current law.
Article 1 was the only provision this decision examined. The rest of the law — not Article 1 — was promulgated on 24 August 2026 as Loi n° 2026-813. In the published text, Article 1 exists only as a marginal note recording its own censure.FR-11A separate provision of that same law extends France’s existing school mobile-phone restriction from lower schools to lycées. That provision was not challenged, was not examined by decision 2026-911 DC, and has nothing to do with the social-media access question this brief tracks — it belongs to a different policy question (device use in schools) and is out of scope here.
The European constraint on the censured design is a separate, narrower point. According to the French Senate’s account, the Commission’s 7 July opinion objected to several provisions, including a proposed national enforcement role that cut across the Digital Services Act framework, without describing the under-15 principle itself as rejected.FR-5The Senate said the associated notification standstill ran until 10 August — a separate clock from the constitutional one, with no established causal link between the two.FR-6
No under-15 social-media access restriction exists in force in France. Treat product work against the censured design as paused, not merely delayed.
The President has tasked the Prime Minister with a constitutionally robust redraft and states an ambition to complete it by spring 2027 — an intention, not a bill, a referral or a scheduled date.
Legal owns the status map and the redraft’s progress; public affairs tracks the French and EU process; product keeps proof-of-age capability reusable rather than built to one censured design.
Keep adoption, censure, promulgation of the remainder and any future redraft as distinct states rather than collapsing them into a single “French ban” date.
The Constitutional Council declares Article 1 contrary to the Constitution. FR-8
The rest of the law is promulgated as Loi n° 2026-813, without Article 1. FR-11
The President’s stated aim to complete a constitutionally robust redraft — not a bill, a referral or a compliance deadline. FR-12
The censure may narrow the eventual rule rather than remove it. The Council preserved the underlying aim — protecting minors and public order — and objected specifically to a blanket, service- indiscriminate design with no individualised route and no verification safeguards. A redraft that adds those distinctions could plausibly revive an under-15 or similar threshold.
That possibility supports keeping proof-of-age capability reusable. It does not justify treating spring 2027 as a compliance date, assuming any particular threshold survives any replacement text—the reviewed evidence establishes the President’s ambition, not the replacement’s provisions—or reading the unexamined remainder of the law as constitutionally cleared.
A tabled redraft bill, its parliamentary progress, and any new constitutional review of it.
No redraft tabled before spring 2027, or a redraft that abandons an under-15 access threshold in favour of a different mechanism (for example, product-design constraints of the kind seen in the Meta settlement on the European situation page).
This country analysis inherits the European brief’s evidence record. The rows below reproduce only the French claims used here, with the same IDs and limits.
Both chambers adopted the joint-committee compromise on 21 July 2026.
French Senate — legislative recordParliamentary adoption is not promulgation or entry into force.The Constitutional Council received two referrals on 23 and 24 July.
French Senate — legislative recordThe outcome was pending when this claim was first recorded (29 July); the Council ruled 14 August — see FR-8.The adopted text restricted under-15 access to covered social-network services and specified exclusions.
French Senate — adopted text, Article 1Describes the censured Article 1 for the historical record; it is not current law (see FR-8).The text stated a 1 September 2026 commencement and a four-month transition for existing accounts.
French Senate — adopted text, Article 1 IIThis date cannot arrive under Article 1 — it was struck down before commencement (see FR-8).The Senate’s account says the Commission objected to several provisions, including the proposed national enforcement design.
French Senate — account of Commission opinionThe record supports neither “Brussels blocked it” nor “Brussels approved it.” Concerns the EU dimension, separate from the constitutional censure below.The Senate said the Commission notification standstill ran until 10 August 2026.
French Senate — account of Commission processA separate clock from the constitutional one; no causal link between the two is established.The post-adoption design would have had Arcom report suspected breaches to competent authorities under EU law.
French Senate — legislative recordDescribes machinery inside the now-struck-down Article 1 — historical record, not current law.The Constitutional Council (decision n° 2026-911 DC, 14 August 2026) declared Article 1 — the under-15 social-media access restriction — contrary to the Constitution in its entirety, before it took effect.
Conseil constitutionnel — decision n° 2026-911 DCArticle 1 only; the Council did not rule on the law’s other provisions (see FR-10).The Council’s stated grounds were (a) a disproportionate restriction on freedom of expression and communication, because the ban applied without regard to an individual minor’s situation or a given service’s specific risk, and (b) inadequate legal safeguards for the privacy implications of the mandatory age-verification requirement.
Conseil constitutionnel — decision n° 2026-911 DCBoth grounds were cited in the decision. Whether either alone would independently have been sufficient to strike down Article 1 was not established by this review — treat them as two stated reasons, not as a confirmed joint-necessity requirement.The Council recognised protecting minors and preventing harm to public order as legitimate aims capable of justifying limits on access — it found Article 1’s specific drafting disproportionate, not the underlying policy goal. It did not rule on the constitutionality of the law’s other provisions.
Conseil constitutionnel — decision n° 2026-911 DCThe other provisions are unexamined by this decision, not affirmatively upheld by it.The rest of the law — not Article 1 — was promulgated as Loi n° 2026-813 du 24 août 2026 (JORF n° 0197, 25 August 2026). Article 1 exists in the published text only as a marginal note recording its own censure.
Légifrance — LOI n° 2026-813 du 24 août 2026No under-15 social-media access restriction exists in force under this law. A separate, unrelated provision of the same law (school mobile-phone rules) is outside this brief’s scope.The President tasked the Prime Minister with preparing a legally robust redraft consistent with the ruling and the European framework, and states an ambition to complete the reform by spring 2027.
Présidence de la République — statement, 14 August 2026A stated presidential ambition, not a bill, a referral or a scheduled date.This is a human-edited child analysis of the European situation brief, not an independently rewritten news article. It shares the same evidence date, claim IDs and legal states.