Simple calendar difficulty, or first backpedaling by the government? The public broadcasting merger project, driven by Rachida Dati, is in any case already behind schedule: its examination in the National Assembly was postponed this Thursday, while the entire sector is on strike to oppose it.
MPs were due to debate this lightning reform at first reading on Thursday and Friday, before a vote scheduled for Monday, May 28. But faced with the congestion of the agenda, in particular because of the time taken by the examination of the agricultural bill, the government finally took the decision at midday to postpone it. The text may not be examined until June. And this, while the timetable desired by the Minister of Culture was already very constrained, with a merger of public broadcasting scheduled for January 1, 2026.
Strikes until Friday
The inclusion of the text, already adopted in the Senate, over just two days between the agricultural bill and that on the end of life had caused strong tensions in the Assembly, even in the presidential camp, with certain deputies believing that the government did not sufficiently respect parliamentary debate. This postponement is above all a setback for the Minister of Culture Rachida Dati, who hoped for a rapid adoption of the text.
From the regional networks of France 3 or France Bleu to the Parisian headquarters, the entire sector is called to strike on Thursday and Friday. Today, the Radio France antennas are disrupted and the usual broadcasts have been replaced by music. On the television side, the Franceinfo channel rebroadcast programs. To ensure the retransmission of the debate Thursday evening on France 2 between Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and RN President Jordan Bardella, management planned to use external service providers, according to the unions.
Wanting to “gather forces”, the Minister of Culture plans a transitional phase with a common holding company for public broadcasting on January 1, 2025, then the merger a year later. Some 16,000 employees are affected. In addition to France Télévisions and Radio France, the audiovisual juggernaut would also bring together Ina (National Audiovisual Institute) and France Médias Monde (RFI, France 24). The integration of this last group, however, is debated even in the presidential camp.
Within these four public companies, fears are acute for resources and jobs. A rally was planned near the Ministry of Culture this Thursday from 1:30 p.m. “It’s our survival that is at stake,” said the Radio France unions during a general assembly this Wednesday, calling for send “a radical message” through the strike.
“Ineffective and dangerous”
The concerns are particularly significant on the side of Radio France, with the idea that radio could be swallowed up by TV. In a column in the newspaper The world published on Wednesday, more than 1,100 employees of the group, including presenters Léa Salamé, Nicolas Demorand, Guillaume Erner and Nagui, expressed their rejection of a “demagogic, ineffective and dangerous” project. “Why engage (the sector) in a merger which promises to be long, complex, anxiety-provoking for employees and without any real editorial objective?”, also ask the France Télévisions unions.
To staff, Rachida Dati assured this Sunday: “I want to guarantee you not only sustainability but (also) your strength” in a world of “exacerbated competition”, between platforms and social networks. “The political moment has come”, according to the minister, after an attempt at rapprochement by her predecessor Franck Riester stopped by Covid-19. “Obviously, we are not going to standardize either professions or activities,” she also insisted this week in front of the Senate.
The fate of France Médias monde in suspense
The giant company, called “France Médias”, would have a budget of four billion euros. To accelerate, Rachida Dati relied on a bill from Senator Laurent Lafon (Centrist Union) programming a holding company, already adopted in June 2023 by the upper house. “We are not opposed to the merger” but “we can wonder about the timetable”, underlined Laurent Lafon before the announcement of the postponement.
The fate of France Médias Monde does not appear to be decided. Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné affirmed that the government was ultimately in favor of its exclusion from the single company. But discussions could be close with the right, conversely attached to its inclusion, and whose voices could once again prove decisive for the government in getting the text voted on.
Unless the government counts on the votes of RN elected officials, who are in favor of a pure and simple privatization of public broadcasting, but who nevertheless support the merger project. A privatization to which LR boss Éric Ciotti is not opposed, who declared that he has “no taboo” on the subject either. For its part, the left holding torpedo like fusion. LFI sees in this project “the culmination of the denigration and weakening” of the public service operated by Emmanuel Macron. “It is not the return of the ORTF which will allow us to compete with Netflix,” added the environmentalists. No new date for the examination of this text has yet been announced.