On May 14, 2024, as violent unrest erupted in Nouméa over a proposed constitutional reform on voter eligibility, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal's government took a step no EU Member State had taken before: it ordered French carriers to block TikTok across the entire territory of New Caledonia. The block, imposed under the state of emergency (état d'urgence) declared the same day, remained in place for nearly two weeks. It was the first time an EU government had executed a territory-wide shutdown of a major platform — and it has now produced the bloc's most consequential internal precedent on the limits of digital emergency powers.
The Conseil d'État's substantive ruling, handed down later in 2024 in response to challenges from La Quadrature du Net, the Ligue des droits de l'Homme, and TikTok itself, did not bless the government's choice. France's highest administrative court found that the executive had failed the proportionality test that anchors French and European fundamental-rights jurisprudence. As Paris debates the implementation of the SREN Law (Loi du 21 mai 2024 visant à sécuriser et à réguler l'espace numérique) and Brussels works through the operation of Article 36 of the Digital Services Act, the Nouméa decision is now the leading EU-internal authority on whether mobile platform shutdowns can survive contact with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Open Internet Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2015/2120).
What the Government Argued, and Why the Court Was Not Persuaded
The Attal government's case rested on a familiar logic: TikTok was reportedly being used to coordinate and amplify violence, and a temporary block was framed as the only proportionate response. But proportionality, as French and European courts have repeatedly emphasised, is not a slogan. It requires evidence that the measure is suitable, that no less restrictive option was available, and that the burden on rights is balanced against the benefit secured.
On all three elements, the government struggled. It produced no detailed showing that TikTok specifically — as opposed to encrypted messengers, other social networks, or word of mouth — was driving the unrest. It did not explain why content-level cooperation with the platform under existing French and EU instruments, including the DSA's notice and incident-response provisions, had been tried and exhausted. And it left untouched the question that should be central to any shutdown analysis: the collateral cost imposed on the roughly 270,000 residents of New Caledonia who rely on the application for journalism, family contact, small business, and political speech.
Why This Ruling Matters Beyond France
The significance of the Nouméa precedent is structural, not merely local. Three threads stand out.
First, it imports the proportionality standard into the EU's internal debate over emergency platform powers. Until 2024, the leading European jurisprudence on internet shutdowns came from the European Court of Human Rights — notably Ahmet Yıldırım v. Turkey (2012) and Cengiz and Others v. Turkey (2015), both involving blanket blocks of platforms. Those cases applied the ECHR. Nouméa is the first occasion an EU Member State's highest court has applied the same logic to a state-of-emergency shutdown within the bloc — and reached a comparable conclusion.
Second, it sets up a direct tension with the SREN Law. France's 2024 digital framework expands administrative blocking authority for categories ranging from child sexual abuse material to certain forms of online fraud. The legislation's defenders argue it is narrowly tailored. The Conseil d'État's reasoning on Nouméa — emphasising the need for individualised evidence, demonstrated necessity, and the availability of less restrictive alternatives — will be the standard against which any expanded use is measured. That is a healthy outcome.
Third, it raises the bar for Article 36 of the DSA. The DSA's crisis response mechanism allows the Commission, in coordination with the European Board for Digital Services, to require very large platforms to assess and mitigate the contribution of their services to serious threats. Article 36 is not a shutdown power. But governments under pressure routinely test the boundaries of available instruments. A clear domestic ruling that territory-wide blocking fails proportionality makes it harder to dress up shutdowns as Article 36 measures.
The Pro-Innovation Case for the Ruling
It is sometimes assumed that opposing internet shutdowns is a civil-liberties position in tension with economic regulation. The opposite is true. A jurisdiction in which platforms can be switched off by ministerial fiat — even temporarily, even in good faith — is a jurisdiction where investment becomes harder to price, where users cannot rely on continuity of service, and where smaller competitors face an additional risk that incumbents are better positioned to absorb. The Open Internet Regulation, adopted in 2015, exists precisely to entrench a baseline of network openness that does not bend to political weather.
The Nouméa decision protects that baseline. It does not say that France can never act against a platform; it says that if it wants to, it must do the work — evidentiary, procedural, and analytical — that the rule of law demands. That is the right answer for users, for platforms, and for the European Union's credibility as a normative leader on digital rights.
What Comes Next
Paris is now considering proposals to codify some form of emergency blocking authority into permanent law. Brussels is watching. The Conseil d'État has not closed the door on every conceivable emergency measure, but it has set the standard high — and rightly so. Any future French or EU instrument that treats platform shutdowns as a routine option will collide with the Nouméa precedent. In the long run, that collision will produce better policy: targeted, evidenced, reviewable — and consistent with the open internet that European citizens and European industry both depend on.