From espionage to information manipulation, France faces an “omnipresent and lasting threat” of foreign interference, with Russia and China seen as the main perpetrators, the French parliamentary intelligence committee said on Thursday.
The committee said in its annual report that in the “tense” current international situation the threat of foreign interference is “high”.
The report called for new legislation, saying the current tools at the disposal of intelligence services were not sufficient to counter threats in the long term.
The French lawmakers called for a bill along the lines of US legislation to counter foreign interference. The legislation would allow the freezing of assets of any individual or structure engaged “in actions detrimental to the maintenance of national cohesion or intended to promote the interests of a foreign power,” the report said.
They also called for a “European response,” noting that new measures could be spelled out in a bill dedicated to the fight against foreign interference.
The committee said that threat had taken on “a new dimension in recent years”, primarily due to a “radical change in the geopolitical context”.
“We have suddenly moved from a world of competition to a world of confrontation with authoritarian regimes on one side and Western democracies on the other,” the authors of the report said.
“This divide between the West and the rest of the world is emerging as the dominant marker of the current period,” they said.
The intelligence committee pointed to large-scale information manipulation campaigns, saying they amounted to a “new form of foreign interference” and stressing their “unprecedented scale”.
“Fake news is a weapon of war against the West,” said the report, citing the 2016 United States presidential election or the Brexit vote in the UK as examples of “foreign digital interference”.
The lawmakers singled out Russia, which invaded neighbouring Ukraine in February 2022, sparking the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II, as a major threat.
The report said that among Moscow’s preferred methods were infiltration, manipulation of information, or the appointment of former European leaders, such as former French prime minister Francois Fillon and German ex-chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, to senior posts at top Russian companies.
The committee said that suspending the broadcasting of RT/Russia Today and Sputnik in France had “helped reduce the scope” of Russia’s information war.
In February, the head of France’s domestic intelligence service the DGSI, Nicolas Lerner, warned members of parliament that foreign intelligence agents — especially from Russia — were using diplomatic cover to infiltrate the country’s political circles.
The lawmakers pointed to China as another major actor, saying it relies on “a network of public and private institutions and key individuals” under the control of the Chinese Communist Party.
The Chinese diaspora in France is estimated at 600,000 people.
The intelligence committee also singled out Turkey, saying Ankara has been relying on its diaspora and religious practices — “a powerful lever to promote a political ideology”.
The report referred to various tactics including the financing of places of worship in France and the secondment of imams to French mosques.
The intelligence committee lamented what it called the “naivety” of elected officials, civil servants, businesses and academic circles in the face of foreign interference.
