Two years of waiting… for a status quo: there will be no Article 16 bis in the “Resilience” law.
On November 10, MPs completed the examination of this bill, which transposes the NIS 2 directive into French law. The solemn vote will take place on November 17.
With 69 votes in favor and 37 against, they removed the article in question, intended to ban backdoors in encrypted messaging services. In particular on the grounds that its language was too broad and risked jeopardizing current investigative techniques.
« The judges are warning us »
Article 16 bis would have prevented imposing on encryption service providers “any […] mechanism or process enabling non-consensual access to protected data.”
“The Ministry of Justice made it clear to us that [this] would put investigative techniques at risk,” explained Éric Bothorel, the deputy for Côtes-d’Armor (Together for the Republic) and the general rapporteur of the special committee tasked with examining the bill. Ayda Hadizadeh (Val-d’Oise, Socialists and allies) agreed: “The judges are warning us. …In front of the judge, seasoned lawyers will shred [the] evidence gathered legally, but without the consent of those involved.”
For Virginie Duby-Muller, removing the article was a matter of “legal coherence and operational effectiveness.” “By definition, judicial interception or an intelligence-gathering technique is access without consent,” recalled the deputy from Haute-Savoie (The Republicans), while stressing that traditional telephony would also have been affected.
The narcotics law vote had unlocked things
Article 16 bis was not in the initial version of the resilience bill. Senators inserted it in March 2025 as a counterweight to an article they had added a few weeks earlier in the narcotics proposal: 8 ter. Its principle: extend to providers of cryptology services and instant messaging the cooperation obligations previously applicable to telecom operators under administrative or judicial interceptions. The National Assembly removed it, and the text passed without it in June 2025.
In this context, the National Rally (RN), initially supportive of Article 16 bis, changed its mind. All the more so because the government pledged not to reintroduce similar provisions in the legislation until the end of the parliamentary session.
Philippe Latombe (The Democrats group), president of the special committee charged with examining the bill, shared the same reasoning: with 8 ter no longer in effect, 16 bis loses its raison d’être. The Vendée deputy also referred to the Boudié report, which “concludes that it is better to stick to the current law.”
In the report delivered to Sébastien Lecornu in September, the former head of the Assembly’s Law Committee indeed recommends refraining from legislating as long as there is no technical solution enabling targeted access without weakening encryption.
The ecologist group wants encryption to be a constitutional right
As Latombe did, Vincent Thiébaut (Horizons & Independents, Bas-Rhin) noted that Article 16 bis would probably be struck down as a legislative rider.
The France Insoumise (LFI) on the contrary defended the article. Removing it “would open a flaw that would make no distinction and benefit anyone,” proclaimed René Pilato, deputy for Charente.
The same sentiment came from Catherine Hervieu. The deputy from Côte-d’Or believes “it is impossible to guarantee absolutely that an exceptional access, designed for intelligence services, could never be diverted by criminal actors or foreign powers.” Her political group (Ecologist and Social) intends to defend, through a request for a report, the constitutional recognition of the right to encryption.
