Opening remarks by Martin Ajdari, President of Arcom, to the Commission of Inquiry into the neutrality, functioning and financing of public audiovisuel, November 25, 2025

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Mr. Chairman,

Mr. Rapporteur,

Ladies and Gentlemen

I would like to thank you for inviting me to speak to your commission of inquiry at the very beginning of its work.

I would first like to remind you that Arcom was created in 2022 from the merger of Hadopi and the French Superior Audiovisual Council, whose respective missions of fighting cultural piracy and regulating the French audiovisual landscape were retained. This mission includes planning and allocating several dozen national and local television frequencies and thousands of FM and DAB+ frequencies throughout France and the French overseas territories, and monitoring the associated obligations.

To these historic missions, the law has added since 2022:

• the contracting of players such as Netflix and Disney+, who today account for a quarter of investment obligations in audiovisuel and cinematic production;
• the fight agains sports piracy, which has fallen by 35% since 2021;
• in 2023, the monitoring of public websites' accessibility obligations to people with disabilities: we monitored 600 sites last year; we will have monitored 2,200 by 2025;

• and, of course, the regulation of digital players, as national coordinator of the Digital Services Regulation (DSR), but also through specific missions such as blocking Russian media under legal sanctions or age verification for access to pornographic sites, which we have implemented.

Focusing on the concerns of your committee, I would first like to point out that the law of September 30, 1986 gives Arcom the primary mission of guaranteeing freedom of communication, while reconciling it with other objectives: the protection of audiences (persons under 18, people with disabilities), human dignity, privacy, copyright and the quality of the debate of ideas through the independence, honesty and plurality of information.

These missions lead Arcom to ensure compliance with several rules, most of which are applicable to all TV and radio providers, both public and private, while others are specific to public service, because it is a common good.

The editorial rules common to both public and private channels and stations can be divided into two broad categories.

Firstly, rules governing the accuracy and honesty of information, as well as the protection of individuals or human groups, notably against incitement to hatred or discrimination. In this respect, we are frequently contacted by citizens, associations and members of parliament regarding sequences shown on the various channels. Tens of thousands of these cases a year are investigated by Arcom (adversary proceedings with service editors), and may result in letters of comment, warnings, formal notices, referral to ethics committees or, in the case of serious and repeated breaches, the imposition of legal sanctions, including financial penalties.

Between 2023 and 2025, the Arcom college examined 646 files concerning 31 private broadcasters and 202 files concerning the fifteen or so public channels and stations, with a percentage of interventions in the form of letters summoning vigilance or reminders to order of 19% for private channels and 18% for public channels. The rate of formal interventions (warnings, formal notices or legal sanctions) was 6% for private channels and 3% for public channels.

The modest proportion of formal interventions with regard to publishers reflects the primacy given by the 1986 law to freedom of communication, and a clear commitment to education rather than legal sanctions.

The second category of rules common to both private and public publishers concerns plurality. Each quarter, Arcom examines the speaking times of political personalities on the different channels, and demands corrections when the representativeness of each party is not respected.

In a decision dated February 13, 2024, the Conseil d'Etat extended the principle of plurality to include opinions expressed not only by politicians, but also by all contributors, columnists and guests. To comply with this decision, Arcom adopted a resolution on July 17, 2024 to specify this new control, which aims to ensure the absence of a manifest and lasting imbalance in the expression of currents of thought and opinion. A manifest imbalance is assessed according to three criteria: diversity of guests, variety of themes and plurality of points of view, all over a period of three months for general-interest channels and one month for news channels.

This is a very recent and rather thorny area, in which our control procedures will be refined in line with the number of submissions of a case before the court, with the same high standards applied to all, private and public broadcasters alike.

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In addition to these common rules, the legislator has entrusted Arcom with specific public service missions:

• Firstly, it appoints the presidents of France Télévisions, Radio France and France Médias Monde, in accordance with the procedures laid down by law.

• The second specific mission is to monitor the execution of these companies' terms of reference, which are the subject of an annual report by Arcom to Parliament, in addition to the publication of a four-year report in the year preceding the end of the presidents' terms of office.

• My third and final mission, which I'll come back to in a moment, is to guarantee the independence and impartiality of the audiovisuel public service, as set out in article 3-1 of the 86 Act.

Arcom thus exercises regular control over the audiovisuel public service, which makes it a qualified observer of its role, even if it is of course not the only one, since it is part of a managerial framework in which Parliament determines the missions, scope and resources of the companies; the Government sets out these missions in specifications and exercises the role of supervisor (Ministry of Culture) as well as shareholder (agence des participations de l'Etat) and, of course, the National audit office controls the proper use of public funds.

For my part, I am convinced of the central role of an ambitious public audiovisual service, whether to guarantee plurality (alongside private groups), the conditions for democratic debate and the confrontation of ideas, or to make available to the public programs of general interest that private channels cannot finance through advertising.

Social cohesion is also at stake. I'm thinking in particular of our presence in all regional and overseas territories (nearly ½ FTV staff), as well as numerous cultural and scientific programs, or sports competitions that would not be accessible free of charge without public service (e.g. Tour de France). And, of course, our ability to project beyond our borders, as well as to preserve and show our audiovisual archives.

This central role is reflected in several ways:

1/ in terms of audience success: France Télévisions and Radio France are both at the top of their diffusion universes, and this is also true of their digital supplies;

2/ through the public service's role in the production and diffusion of international, national and local news;

3/ through its investment in audiovisual and cinematographic creation (550 million in 2024, including Arte, 1/3 of the total), almost all of which benefits European works or works of original French expression, which is also a sovereignty issue;

4/ by its pioneering role in terms of accessibility, representation of diversity (disability) and gender parity.

Viewers and listeners are therefore very attached to the audiovisuel public service, but also legitimately demanding of it: belonging to all, and financed by all, the audiovisuel public service must address all and play a unifying role, in a society that is polarizing and fragmenting.

Today, like other public services and in other countries, it is being challenged on two fronts.

The first is the financial situation, and hence the cost of public audiovisuel to the community. In fact, the means devoted to this public service are significant (a total of €3.9 billion in 2025 for France Télévisions, Radio France, France Médias Monde, Arte, Ina, TV5 monde), particularly in these times of budgetary constraint. Even if they remain lower than those observed in Germany or the UK, and even if they have decreased in constant euros over the last ten years (by around 15-20%), while public spending as a whole has increased at a significantly higher rate than inflation.

Nevertheless, the financial situation of France Télévisions is a cause for concern, as Arcom had already pointed out in January in its four-year review, and which is essentially the result of the abandonment of the Salto platform (following TF1's withdrawal), and of a rather abrupt inflexion in the financial pathway at the end of 2024, linked to the state of public finances.

I have two observations to make about this situation: the first is that it makes it all the more necessary to implement the avenues for improvement put forward by the National audit office, whether in terms of adapting the collective bargaining agreement to a new context, marked by the all-digital era, or furthering convergence between public audiovisuel companies.

Secondly, the financial situation of France Télévisions, combined with that of public finances, summons us to ensure consistency between the means that the public authorities allocate to the audiovisuel public service and the missions they entrust to it. This could also be a reason for the authorities to reflect on the scope of the public audiovisual supply, in an environment that is no longer what it was twenty or forty years ago. But on the dual condition of ensuring 1/ coherence between means and missions, and 2/ multi-year visibility to enable the necessary developments to be carried out in a serene and professional manner.

The second reason, justified or not, why public audiovisuel is contested is its impartiality, an impartiality which the 1986 law makes provision for Arcom to guarantee, in the same way as independence.

For forty years, and following the break-up of the ORTF, attention has focused on the independence of public audiovisuel from governments. This attention is now focused on the notion of impartiality, which is not defined by any text, as mentioned in the report of the Etats généraux de l'information published a year ago. This notion needs to be examined in greater depth, to gauge the additional requirements it implies in relation to notions such as plurality and honesty of information, which apply to all channels, or neutrality.

Neutrality is a principle applicable to all authorities, but in the specific field of the media, it must be reconciled with editorial freedom and the right to criticism or even parody, and more generally with the confrontation of ideas - which cannot always be translated into a neutral antenna.

These questions and misunderstandings (the extent of which was demonstrated by the September controversy) are at the heart of the reflection process we have announced, which aims to objectivise and clarify the scope of the notion of impartiality; to measure the public's perception and expectations of public service broadcasting; and finally, to evaluate the tools available to public audiovisual companies and, where appropriate, supplement them in the light of experience in Europe.

This is the purpose of the mission we have just entrusted to Mr. Bruno Lasserre, Honorary Vice-President of the Conseil d'Etat and former Chairman of the Competition Authority, which will result in a public report presenting notices on this subject in the spring of 2026.

Thank you for your attention. I would be delighted to answer any questions you may have.