French President Emmanuel Macron Calls on YouTube to Finance Content and Warns of Growing Threat to Cultural Model (EXCLUSIVE)

Macron said the Lumière Summit in Saint-Paul-de-Vence was deliberately being held at a moment of dramatic upheaval for the entertainment business, from the growing dominance of YouTube and TikTok to AI. French President Emmanuel Macron said the Lumière Summit in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, which he co-chaired with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Monday, was deliberately held at a moment of dramatic upheaval for the entertainment business, from the growing dominance of YouTube and TikTok to AI and media consolidation. Speaking to Variety at the event, he pointed to the growing power of YouTube, TikTok and other social platforms as one of the reasons the timing was right for the landmark gathering devoted to the future of cinema and the moving image.

It’s de facto the default platform in a lot of countries for a lot of people. And it’s quite clear that today they divert a lot of people from these platforms or the big channels where a lot of money is invested in creation,” said Macron at the Fondation Maeght, a French art foundation showcasing works of art from Georges Braque to Joan Miró, nestled amid a luxuriant forest. He argued that YouTube, which is currently outtalking Netflix in over 20 international markets, should increasingly be brought into the same ecosystem as other global platforms such as Netflix, Amazon and Disney, that have been required to invest in local production.

France and other countries need to “engage with them” in a multilateral way, he said, to try to change the platform’s approach so that it helps finance “local content,” while supporting “more creativity, more creations, more respect of the authors.” Macron, who’s been a driving force behind the rise of French AI companies, including Mistral, as well as the creation of the EU’s AI Act and the international summit on AI that was held last year, also said France wanted to compete aggressively in AI by expanding computing capacity, data centers and European models. But he insisted that technological ambition must be accompanied by protections for intellectual property and much greater transparency. Asked about his discussions about EU regulations with companies such as Google or OpenAI, Macron said that while France is eager to compete in the AI race, it’s also pushing for greater transparency and protections for creators in Europe.

So transparency for us is key,” he said. Because we think it’s fair.” Without that, Macron warned, AI could “totally transform the relationship to truth,” feeding distrust not only in creative content but in science and democracy. Macron also addressed the increasing consolidation of the entertainment business and his discussions surrounding the greenlighting of the Paramount-Warner Bros. deal by the EU regulators.

He said he didn’t have an active role in lobbying for the merger, but admitted that he supported “the commitments made to invest more in Europe and to create more content and to provide guarantees and commitments vis-à-vis our theaters.” Paramount Skydance boss David Ellison traveled to Paris (as well as London and Germany) in January and met with Macron, among other high-level political and industry figures. The French President described the merger case as fundamentally “a U.S. M&A story,” saying his priority was ensuring that a major company like Paramount Skydance maintained a strong footprint in France and Europe.

While Ellison wasn’t present at the Lumiere Summit, Paramount Skydance’s Andy Gordon was there and sat at Macron’s table at lunch, alongside The Walt Disney Company’s Dana Walden, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, NBCUniversal Entertainment’s Donna Langley, Mediawan’s Pierre-Antoine Capton and Sony’s Tom Rothman, among others. The Summit is also being held on the last stretch of his second mandate as he is due to leave office in May. With the far-right and far-left parties dominating polls ahead of the next presidential election, the French film and TV industry has shared deep concerns over the future of France’s prized cultural model that could come under threat.