France puts Pedro Sánchez in a difficult position over his plan to censor social media for minors under 16

Many politicians today are reviving pro-censorship positions that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

Can you imagine a politician forbidding your children from reading books and censoring the ones you read?
Pedro Sánchez attacks the right to privacy and compares using a social network with buying a gun

At the end of July, the French National Assembly passed a law to prohibit access to social media for children under 15, a ban that was scheduled to come into effect on September 1, 2026. France was the first European country to pass such a controversial measure, using the protection of minors from certain content on these social networks as its justification.

This afternoon, the Constitutional Council of France issued a decision overturning that ban. In its Decision No. 2026-911 DC, the Council states: "the legislator could not, without undermining freedom of expression and communication, institute a general prohibition that would have the effect of depriving minors of their freedom of access to many online communication services, without taking into account either the minor's situation or the specific risks of these services." And it adds: "In these circumstances, the challenged provisions infringe this freedom in a manner that is neither appropriate, necessary, nor proportionate to the objective pursued."

The Council sets out what many have pointed out as the true purpose of such regulations: "By prohibiting access to certain online services to anyone under the age of fifteen, the challenged provisions imply, in themselves, that any person, even an adult, must prove their age before accessing them". Therefore, the Council determines that Article 1 of the aforementioned law, which established this censorship of minors, "is contrary to the Constitution".

In February of this year, Pedro Sánchez announced his intention to ban social media for minors under 16 years of age, that is, raising the age threshold even further established by the now annulled, undemocratic French law. As noted in the statement published by La Moncloa on February 3 regarding that project, Sánchez intended to "prohibit access to social networks in Spain for minors under sixteen years of age forcing digital platforms to implement effective age verification systems". Just as French politicians who supported that censorship in France did, including Emmanuel Macron, Sánchez used that veto on minors as a pretext to exert control over adults, and he did so precisely at a time when social networks have become an important channel of protest against a government immersed in an authoritarian drift and in constant corruption scandals.

The decision by the French Constitutional Council not only strikes down the aforementioned French law, but also exposes Sánchez's anti-democratic project to control social media. The key difference is that in Spain, the Constitutional Court is entirely controlled by the socialists, and in recent years it has had no qualms about condoning any abuse of power committed by Sánchez's government, twisting and distorting the Spanish Constitution to convince us that it says the exact opposite of what we can read. The French Republic is hardly a model state from various perspectives, but even such a state has more effective democratic checks and balances than Spain, something that should be a reason to undertake profound reforms when Sánchez is ousted from power by the ballot box.

---

Photo: Camilo Jiménez.