FRANCE Law and Practice Contributed by: Clara Hainsdorf, Bertrand Liard, Saam Golshani and Guillaume Vitrich, White & Case LLP
responses, and transparency obligations under the DSA and GDPR pose legal and competitive challenges. Since 1 January 2025, the French tax authorities have extended the scope of their efforts to com - bat fraud. Thanks to a new decree, tax officials, like customs officers, can collect and analyse public data published on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. 10.2 Regulatory and Compliance Issues There is no one specific regulatory body for social media. CNIL is the authority responsible for ensuring the protection of personal data and privacy rights, while ARCOM regulates content moderation, hate speech and online safety, DGCCRF monitors consumer protection, and the European Commission is in charge of enforc - ing various European regulations. CNIL can impose fines of up to 4% of global turnover for GDPR violations and mandate cor - rective measures. ARCOM can issue warnings, fines or sanctions for failing to remove illegal content within required deadlines. DGCCRF can conduct investigations, impose fines and enforce fair practices. The European Commis - sion imposes penalties of up to 6% of global turnover under the DSA and up to 10% of global turnover under the DMA in cases of infringement.
On 27 June 2024, ARCOM, CNIL and DGCCRF signed a tripartite agreement to co-ordinate the implementation of the DSA. The agreement for - malises co-operation commitments, notably in terms of sharing information on investigations and handling user complaints. It also provides a framework for the designation of trusted sig - nallers, whose selection is overseen by ARCOM with the advice of CNIL and DGCCRF. On 31 December 2021, CNIL imposed a fine of EUR150 million on Google LLC and Google Ireland Limited for inadequate cookie, policies. The committee also ordered the companies to ensure that users of google.fr and youtube.com in France could refuse cookies as easily as they could accept them, giving them three months to comply. In 2022, ARCOM alleged that Twitter was not complying with its obligations to combat hate speech and illegal content online, identifying significant shortcomings in the moderation and removal of such content. Consequently, ARCOM issued a formal notice to Twitter. The French tax authorities have initiated several tax adjustments against social networks.
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