Matignon brings together political groups and reveals two Viginum reports, while awaiting a bill with emergency referrals and reinforced penalties in the fall.
Thursday June 11, 2026, Sébastien Lecornu brought together political groups and representatives of security institutions in Matignon to warn of foreign interference. If the risk “was significant in the municipal elections, without major effect”, it suggests, according to the Prime Minister, “prospects of serious threats to the presidential election of 2027”. The entire political class could be concerned, he insisted on the need to protect the democratic debate and to provide transparency on past operations, starting with that which targeted candidates from La France insoumise, originating from an Israeli company.
Viginum reports and lessons from municipal elections
To support this observation, two Viginum reports were made public in parallel. The first, already known, covers interference during the municipal elections, which also targeted Pierre-Yves Bournazel (Horizons) in Paris, but which remained “limited” in volume and impact; the second, more technical, details the attempts against the Rebels. The Secretary General of Defense and National Security (SGDSN) had also warned that these municipal elections could serve as a “dress rehearsal”. The phenomenon is not new: Viginum had already detected 25 attempts at foreign digital interference in 2024, the year of European and legislative elections, even if they had then lacked visibility and had little impact on public debate.
It was the attack on La France insoumise which precipitated the case. At the end of May, the party warned of the “danger” of interference, illustrated by a false accusation of rape and false campaign visuals, leading the Paris prosecutor’s office to open an investigation. If Sébastien Lecornu recognized that the sponsor remained unknown, evoking a “form of digital mercenary”, he asked for “explanations” and “help” from the Israeli authorities: according to Viginum, the interference could come from Black Corp, a private group operating from Israel. In response, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party proposes the creation of a body to monitor the presidential campaign and the ban on political messages based on the profiling of personal data.
On the legislative level, and while a bill was announced in April by Emmanuel Macron, himself a victim of interference in 2017, the Prime Minister outlined two axes: new referrals to urgently take legal action during an electoral period, and a toughening of the penalties, deemed “not dissuasive enough”. This text could be included on the parliamentary agenda for the fall.
A major difficulty remains: distinguishing foreign interference from the simple expression of an opinion. Several officials thus denounced as interference the comments of the Israeli ambassador to France, Joshua Zarka, who hoped that “anyone rather than Jean-Luc Mélenchon” would win the 2027 presidential election. Sébastien Lecornu himself called for nuance, distinguishing foreign interference from what amounts to “propaganda” – like the pro-Russian columnist Xenia Fedorova, former boss of RT in France and now present in Vincent Bolloré’s media. Her case crystallizes the dilemma: MEPs are calling for sanctions against her and questioning the renewal, in 2024, of her residence permit for ten years, when the Prime Minister refuses any ban in principle. He has set a single “red line”, that of the “fundamental interests of the Nation”, and instead pleads for a “contradiction” to be brought to him during his public interventions. “If we have to ban everyone who propagandizes with ideas we don’t agree with, we’re going to ban a lot of people,” he warned. An arbitration contested by MEP Nathalie Loiseau, for whom the far right is in “denial” by favoring freedom of expression at all costs.
European references and foreign precedents
To measure the extent of the risk, the Minister for Europe, Benjamin Haddad, recalled a recent precedent: during the 2024 presidential election in Moldova, 10% of the votes were purchased via Telegram, in particular by transfers in cryptocurrency, for a cost which had represented, on the Russian side, the equivalent of a single day of war in Ukraine. Enough to illustrate the risk of large-scale manipulation and the need for rapid devices, at the heart of Matignon’s bill.
