The Amendments Were Whispered
A deputy in the president's own party admitted who wrote his amendments. The moat just confessed.
On May 29, a deputy from the president’s party named Éric Bothorel filed twelve amendments to a copyright bill. Three more came from his Renaissance colleague Prisca Thévenot. All fifteen landed the same Friday, three days before the Assembly’s culture commission was due to examine the text, and all fifteen failed the following Tuesday.[1] Asked where the measures came from, Bothorel told Le Point that some had been soufflés par Mistral — whispered by Mistral.[2]
That sentence is the one this newsletter spent four thousand words predicting last week.
“Lobby, Levy, Legislate” argued that Mistral’s moat is not sovereignty or model quality but access: the French president’s contact list, which Arthur Mensch is working to convert into formal law before the 2027 election changes who answers the phone.[3] That was an inference from the customer roster and the lobbying pattern. It did not name this bill; it named the move. A week later, a legislator in the governing party put the move on the public record.
The bill itself is narrow. Proposition de loi n° 2634, adopted by the Senate, would install a présomption d’utilisation: a presumption that an AI provider trained on protected cultural works, unless the provider can document otherwise.[4] It reverses the burden of proof. Today, an author has to prove their work was scraped; under the text, the company has to show what went into the model. The French government’s own civic portal describes it in one line: the bill reverses the burden of proof. [5]
The amendments tell you whom that threatens. One of Bothorel’s amendments inserts two words, de modèles, after “fournisseurs,” narrowing the bill so it binds only model-builders and exempts the French firms that merely deploy AI downstream — the corporates that fill Mistral’s customer list. Its justification is not commercial. It is sovereign: a broad scope, the amendment argues, would halt the sector’s growth and our digital sovereignty. [6] Another strikes the retroactivity clause, reciting the industry’s standard line that documenting training data demands complex technical adaptations. [7] A third went after the bill’s title.[8] Filing amendments against a bill is ordinary politics; a legislator admitting the affected company drafted them is not. The sovereignty argument, deployed to reshape a copyright statute, in the pen of the president’s party. This is not yet the procurement law the long-form predicted — it is the same access doing the simpler job first: shielding the customer list from a bill before writing the law that entrenches it.
Emmanuel Maurel, the deputy carrying the text, attributed the pressure to “certains anciens ministres du bloc central” — former central-bloc ministers now working the building.[9] Readers of the long-form will recognize the address. The piece built its second act on one such figure: Cédric O, the former secretary of state for digital affairs who became a Mistral shareholder and adviser.[3] Maurel, with no framework to grind, arrived at the same door.
The calendar rhymes, too. Yaël Braun-Pivet, the Assembly’s president, received Mensch on May 7. Five days later, the panel that sets the Assembly’s agenda drew up the lineup for a cross-party session and left the copyright bill off it.[10] The Assembly says the meeting was routine. The sequence stands regardless.
Last week’s piece closed on “a calendar that runs out in eighteen months.” This week sharpens why the calendar matters. The lobbying is not the behavior of a company that thinks it has time; it is the behavior of one racing against a deadline. Fifteen amendments filed in a single afternoon are the president’s party spending its access while the access still exists.
There is one scenario where the clock resets: Gabriel Attal. The former prime minister has made AI a central plank of his campaign, vowing to turn France into “la patrie de l’IA,” and a macroniste successor in the Élysée would keep the contact list warm.[11] But Attal is not the favorite, by far. A moat that depends on a trailing candidate is a moat with an expiry date. The base case is the one the long-form named: the access leaves with the administration that built it. That is why Mistral is not waiting. You do not whisper fifteen amendments into a friendly deputy’s hand if you expect the friendly deputies to still be there in three years.
The commission turned back all fifteen, and the bill survived the room. But the surviving committee is not a passage. The text now sits last in the running order of a reserved day claimed by a small opposition group, a slot it may never reach; if it advances with amendments attached, it returns to the Senate to die of scheduling.[12] Mistral does not need to defeat this bill. It needs the bill to never finish, and it has a governing party willing to file amendments to buy time.
Still, time is the one thing Mistral cannot lobby for. The president, whose contact list is the moat, is term-limited and polling in the low twenties; in 2027, he leaves, and the phone Mensch has been calling stops being his to answer.[13] The amendments filed in a single afternoon are not the work of a winning company. They are the work of one racing to pour its access into law before the access walks out of the Élysée. Strip the sovereignty language, and the structure is plain crony capitalism: a national champion whose valuation, customer base, and inner circle of former ministers are all underwritten by one man’s term in office.[3]
The lobbying was the visible part. The confession was the story. The clock is the verdict. Macron’s days are numbered, and everyone on his contact list is counting down with him.
Notes
[1]: Amendments to Proposition de loi n° 2634, Commission des affaires culturelles et de l’éducation, Assemblée nationale. Of sixteen amendments examined June 2, 2026, twelve were filed by M. Éric Bothorel and three by Mme Prisca Thévenot (both groupe Ensemble pour la République); one, by Mme Véronique Ludmann (Horizons), was withdrawn. All were deposited May 29, 2026 and rejected or withdrawn June 2. Amendment list and authors, Assemblée nationale.
[2]: Thomas Graindorge, “« Je n’ai jamais vu un lobbying de cette puissance » : à l’Assemblée, la bataille de Mistral contre le droit d’auteur,” Le Point, June 1, 2026. Éric Bothorel quoted acknowledging certain measures were “soufflés par Mistral.” Erwan Balanant (Les Démocrates) is quoted in the same piece: “Je n’ai jamais vu un lobbying de cette puissance-là sur les domaines culturels.”
[3]: “The President’s Customer List,” The AI Realist, May 2026. The Cédric O biographical detail — his role as Mistral shareholder and adviser following his tenure as secretary of state for digital affairs — is sourced there.
[4]: Proposition de loi relative à l’instauration d’une présomption d’utilisation des contenus culturels par les fournisseurs d’intelligence artificielle, n° 2634, adopted by the Sénat (unanimously) April 8, 2026. Commission text n° 2864-A0 deposited at the Assemblée June 2, 2026. Note: the Sénat title used “présomption d’exploitation”; the version examined at the Assemblée reads “présomption d’utilisation.”
[5]: Vie publique (Direction de l’information légale et administrative), notice of April 10, 2026: the bill “renverse la charge de la preuve de l’utilisation de contenus culturels par les fournisseurs d’IA.”
[6]: Amendement n° AC2, M. Éric Bothorel, Commission des affaires culturelles, rejected June 2, 2026: “À l’alinéa 4, après le mot « fournisseurs » insérer les mots « de modèles ».” Exposé sommaire: “Un champ d’application trop large et non justifié du texte […] mettrait un coup d’arrêt à l’essor du secteur et à notre souveraineté numérique.” The amendment also cites the Munich Regional Court ruling GEMA v. OpenAI (November 11, 2025) — the same enforcement action analyzed in “Register, Disclose, Pay.”
[7]: Amendement n° AC10, M. Éric Bothorel: “Supprimer l’alinéa 5,” removing retroactive application to pending litigation, on the grounds that transparency and traceability compliance requires “des adaptations techniques complexes” that cannot be applied retroactively.
[8]: Amendement n° AC3, M. Éric Bothorel, targeting the bill’s title (TITRE).
[9]: Maurel quote per Le Point (note 2). Maurel, the GDR rapporteur, has publicly championed the text alongside the collecting societies Adami, SACD, and ADAGP.
[10]: Braun-Pivet–Mensch meeting (May 7) per Le Point (note 2). The bill’s absence from the agenda set by the May 12 Conférence des présidents is corroborated by “IA : pas de proposition de loi sur le droit d’auteur à l’ordre du jour de l’Assemblée nationale,” Le Monde, May 12, 2026, and by Décideurs Juridiques, May 12, 2026.
[11]: Gabriel Attal, first major campaign rally, May 29, 2026, per Le Point (note 2), which reports his ambition to make France “la patrie de l’IA” and attributes to him an effort to slow the text. Direct-quote wording to be confirmed against the rally transcript before syndication.
[12]: Procedural posture per Le Point (note 2): the text is placed last in the GDR niche order of June 11; amendments lengthen hémicycle debate and, if adopted, force a return to the Sénat for a conforming vote.
[13]: Emmanuel Macron, in his second consecutive term, is barred by Article 6 of the French Constitution from seeking a third; his mandate ends in 2027. His approval stood in the low twenties as of May 2026 (Ipsos, Elabe, and Morning Consult tracking polls), as detailed in “The President’s Customer List” (note 3).