Arcom points to an excessive concentration of the National Rally’s speaking time at night on Franceinfo and France Inter from January to the end of March 2026.
The Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication (Arcom) announced Thursday, June 11, in a press release, the formal notice to Radio France for under-representation of the National Rally (RN) during the day between January and the end of March 2026 on the Franceinfo and France Inter antennas. According to Arcom, more than 70% of the RN’s speaking time on franceinfo and around 60% on France Inter was broadcast from midnight to six a.m., periods “where the audience is low”. Arcom concludes that there are “breaches of the rules of political pluralism”, with regard to the representativeness of the RN and the obligation to guarantee fairness between political groups. The formal notice procedure, a formal act by the regulator, aims to put an end to these breaches under penalty of more severe sanctions.
A faulty technical tool according to Radio France
Radio France describes the situation as “cyclical” and “unintentional”. The public group recognizes “a technical error” linked to the deployment in January 2026 of a “new control tool” for speaking times, “very complex” and covering all of its antennas, for which the “day/night distinction was not yet possible”. Due to a lack of real-time alert, the teams were not able to “rebalance” immediately. “An update has been made,” assures Radio France, in order to now guarantee the visibility of speaking times day and night.
Franceinfo specifies that it “requested on numerous occasions” Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella for the morning political interview at 8:30 a.m., but that these invitations were “declined”: “they have not come for more than two years”, underlines the channel, which complicates the achievement of speaking time quotas during the day.
Marine Le Pen, leader of the RN deputies, judges that the “behavior” of Radio France “is no longer bearable”. Jordan Bardella deplored on
Ex post control and fairness of political formations
Radios and televisions transmit monthly statements of political figures’ speaking times to Arcom. The regulator controls this data a posteriori to ensure “fairness between political groups”, whether during an election period or outside of an election, requiring public service branches to respect the principles of pluralism and representativeness.
