Tag: France — Today News Brief

Europe's cost-of-living protests turn violent: 320,000 march in France, shops looted in Frankfurt

Photo: Jules*, CC BY-SA 4.0 (file image: riot police at a Paris protest, March 2023) / Source: Wikimedia Commons

NEW World · 06:37

Europe's cost-of-living protests turn violent: 320,000 march in France, shops looted in Frankfurt

A wave of youth-led protests over the cost of living, underfunded schools and public spending cuts swept across Europe on Saturday, 31 October. About 320,000 people marched in France, according to the Interior Ministry, and thousands more in Germany. Most rallies were peaceful during the day, but clashes with police broke out after dark in several cities, and rioters looted shops in central Frankfurt.

Source: French Interior Ministry; BBC; DW; AFP; Reuters; NBC News

French MPs vote a 5.5-cent-per-gigabyte tax on data that Netflix, Google and other platforms send to French users

Photo: PanierAvide, CC BY-SA 4.0, resized (file image: the hemicycle of France's National Assembly, September 2024) / Source: Wikimedia Commons

NEW Tech · 04:44

French MPs vote a 5.5-cent-per-gigabyte tax on data that Netflix, Google and other platforms send to French users

France's National Assembly on Friday, 30 October, adopted a new tax of 0.055 euros (5.5 euro cents) per gigabyte of data that content providers such as Netflix, Google, Meta and Amazon send to internet users in France. The Socialist amendment to the 2027 budget passed by 11 votes to 10, against the advice of the government and the budget rapporteur. It is not law yet: the budget still has to clear the rest of the Assembly's first reading and the Senate.

Source: Assemblée nationale (amendment I-1358); Datan; Numerama; RTL; Télé Satellite