But during a heated Senate debate early Tuesday, opponents on the left raised what they called significant concerns about the future funding and independence of public television and radio, warning that public broadcasting was at risk of being weakened. Some on the right were also critical, calling for a proper debate on a wider overhaul of public broadcasting, saying the quality of the debate in the Senate was “poor”. When Macron ran for a second term as president in the spring, he argued that scrapping the broadcasting license fee made sense because he wanted to continue cutting taxes. Far-right Marine Le Pen, who was defeated by Macron in the final vote, wanted to go further, not just by abolishing the license fee but by privatizing public television and radio in mainland France. The French license fee is €138 (£115) per year in mainland France and applies to around 27 million TV-declaring homes. In comparison, the UK TV license is £159. Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak said the government would protect public television and radio budgets in the short term while drawing up a “road map” for the future of public broadcasting. The current bill would, in the short term, allocate a “fraction of the VAT” to public broadcasting, around €3.7 billion, which is roughly the amount currently brought in by the license fee. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST But senators from many different parties, from the right to the left, attacked what they called a lack of a concrete strategy for how to secure funding over the long term. Some said they agreed that the license fee, based on owning a TV, was outdated and “outdated” and that “the French won’t miss it”. But they warned the bill was rushed and poorly prepared. Jean-Raymond Hugonet of the right-wing Les Républicains party said there was a “problem of timing”. the bill amounted to demagoguery and was passed too quickly without a public broadcasting strategy. He said: “We had a president who wanted to be re-elected and who proposed something very popular: repealing an outdated and unfair tax that no one wanted anymore.” Hugonet argued that more work needed to be done on future funding mechanisms. Socialist senator David Assouline said: “The stakes are high in our society, where there is a large concentration of private channels and foreign platforms, which means we need to strengthen public broadcasting.” He said the culture minister “hailed the glory” of French public broadcasting but was “creating the conditions for its weakening”.
