Minister talks about creation of X account French Response, to combat information manipulation

Ambassadors’ Conference – Plenary session on combating information manipulation – Statements by M. Jean-Noël Barrot, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs (excerpts)

Paris, 9 January 2026

We’re beginning this final sequence of our Ambassadors’ Conference and dedicating it this year to an emerging problem, but one that concerns what’s most personal to us, i.e. the responsibility we’ve been given to convey what France has to say. As you know – I said a few words on this at the very start of my message this morning –, we’re going through a technological revolution that has fragmented the information space. So this raises a new question about how we should be conveying what France has to say. And in light of this fragmentation we face a new challenge, because our adversaries and competitors have rushed into the gaps that have appeared in the information space in order to undermine our interests, our image and France more generally. Conflictuality has crept into a new sphere: perceptions.

We need only look at the past year, 2025, to see how much we were bombarded by disinformation campaigns mounted externally by our adversaries and competitors. Have a look.

[Video is played listing recent attacks on France]

That could prompt a smile. We could say that, after all, it’s on X, it’s on TikTok, it’s on Instagram; that in a way it’s sort of light-hearted. But that would be a very serious mistake, because these kinds of attacks – particularly when they’re coordinated, and the SGDSN [General Secretariat for Defence and National Security] will correct me if I’m wrong – can have major consequences.

Major consequences firstly on the economic, social and institutional life of our countries. Let’s remember that last year [2024], a presidential election in a European Union member country had to be annulled because the campaign had been manipulated on a large scale on a Chinese social media network.

Consequences on our own diplomatic operations too. You’ve had a few examples here. We’ve been the target of repeated attacks, because we mobilized alongside Ukraine and mobilized to help bring about peace and stability in the Middle East. When we take initiatives now at the UN Security Council and General Assembly, we’ve got to justify ourselves to our public at the same time because we’re attacked from all sides by adversaries attempting to discredit us.

But this goes even further. These attacks can undermine our staff, our heads of post, who, over the past year in Armenia, Georgia, the Sahel and West Africa, have been directly and personally targeted to be intimidated, discouraged and prevented from conducting bilateral dialogue defending the interests of France and French people.

Consequences nationally, consequences on our diplomatic operations, consequences when it comes to fulfilling the role of ambassador. And the bad news is that it isn’t about to stop, because it’s very easy to do. Have a look.

[Fake video is played of the Minister laying claim to Louisiana at the UN General Assembly and appointing Thomas Pesquet special envoy to Louisiana]

It took the Press and Communication Directorate 1 minute 15 seconds to produce this video free of charge, and let me also congratulate the Director and his teams. Without my further describing the state of the threat, you can see the world we’re entering into, and why we’ve made so many efforts in the past year to strengthen ourselves and be able to exercise this responsibility to convey what France has to say and retaliate. 

Because the only proper attitude to adopt in this information war that has started is to raise your voice and turn up the volume; to make yourselves heard, so that when France has messages to send they are genuinely heard, and also to defend yourselves, i.e. conduct 24/7 monitoring all over the world, to detect attacks very early and be capable of retaliating.

“FRENCH RESPONSE” X ACCOUNT

In 2025, we transformed the Press and Communication Directorate. A new director came in. (…) Perhaps one of the most spectacular and innovative achievements in this transformation was the creation of the X account French Response, whose success you’ve seen in recent weeks. (…)

In the last week of September and the first weeks of October, the French Response account gained roughly 30,000 views. There are now more than a million views per week. And the account already has more than 20,000 followers, which shows that what we initiated, experimented with, has been crowned with success.

So, ambassadors, I invite you to draw inspiration from this approach, this stance. If you don’t know French Response, I invite you to subscribe to it. And you’ll see that no fake news emanates from the account, but that information is provided there through a frank approach with a touch of humour, mockery, sometimes self-mockery, that leads to it going viral on social media, which allows us to increase the impact of the message we want to send. 

So the virtue of French Response is to retaliate when content is put out that damages our image. But French Response also has the virtue of being preventative, because our adversaries now know that if they damage our image, they can be ridiculed by French Response.

And finally, disinformation is spread through ignorance, because a post is published on a social media outlet, a viewer reposts it and a duly authorized journalist finally picks it up by mistake. By defusing fake news, French Response also forestalls the risk of it being picked up and, as it were, contaminating the information space. 

Transforming the DCP, creating tools like French Response, and also strengthening the network by putting in place six monitors in the appropriate time zones so that we can fulfil our task of detection 24/7. 

In 2026, this effort will continue. I asked you this morning to establish local influence committees at your posts, bringing together all the stakeholders and all the state services working under your responsibility. I’m obviously thinking about the people in charge of cultural diplomacy; I’m thinking about your defence attachés, some of whom already have significant experience of information warfare; and I’m thinking about all the embassy services.

DIGITAL SERVICES ACT 

I also want to emphasize our legacy, the legacy of the French presidency of the European Union, its regulations, and in particular the Digital Services Act: we secured its sovereign, democratic adoption in 2022 and you can clearly see how actively we’re going to have to work in every capital, including Brussels, to ensure its proper implementation.

You’ve heard me say publicly many times that unless the European Commission exercises the prerogatives we entrusted it with through the Act, it will have to restore the Member States’ ability to do so in its place. The good news is that the Commission has started implementing the Act by conducting investigations, successfully concluding them and adopting sanctions. But you can also see clearly that a kind of timidity could take root in a Commission keen not to increase the number of challengingissues vis-à-vis some of our partners. We’ll push for the full and complete implementation of the Act, which is a precondition for protecting our democracy. (…) Implementing the Digital Services Act will be a test of our Union’s credibility. (…)./.