Vincent Bolloré was interviewed on 19 January by the enquiry commission1 set up by the French Senate to investigate media concentration and its effects on democracy2 in France. Bolloré rejected accusations of political or ideological interventionism, and argued that his media expansion policy was purely economic because the media is the second most profitable economic sector after luxury goods3 .
This would probably explain why Bolloré, which makes a third of its turnover in Africa, would like to sell its port and logistics activities in Africa4 to the Swiss shipowner MSC5 , which is already active in Togo and Côte d'Ivoire. However, despite the sale of Bolloré Africa Logistics, its other African activities continue: the group maintains its participation in SOCFIN6 , and Group Vivendi Africa is increasing its activities.
The commission mentioned the politicisation of CNews, the brutality of Bolloré's methods (denounced by RSF), and the abuse of legal proceedings against journalists, which have been dismissed several times by the courts7 . The vertical concentration, i.e. the 360° activity of the group8 was also mentioned: press (JDD), television (CNews, Canal), radio (Europe 1), publishing9 , Havas (communication, including politics10 ), music (Universal), online video (Dailymotion), polling institutes (CSA). However, the commission did not mention Group Vivendi Africa, which is currently deploying a broadband internet offer in French-speaking Africa.
Vincent Bolloré explained that he wants his group to defend French and European culture by competing with the GAFAs: "the real danger is the GAFAs, which are, as you have seen, considerable weights, which pass through uncontrolled, uncontrollable pipes...". The uncontrolled/uncontrollable slip of the tongue takes on its full meaning if you know that while Bolloré is going to have to sell its logistics activities in Africa, Vivendi Africa is going to take a significant market share in the Internet access sector in French-speaking Africa.
If the senators did perceive the threat of media concentration on democracy, they did not seem to perceive that the addition of the control of the Internet access sector to Bolloré's media empire poses a problem of informational totalism: the group is expanding into the field of information, advertising, political communication, audiovisual creation, in other words all informational content. By extending to Internet access, the group can therefore control the pipes that distribute all this content.
And this informational totalism does not only concern the control of the creation and distribution of all informational content: it also concerns the possibility of total surveillance of users. An access provider can in practice access the entirety of users' behaviour on the Internet: which websites they consult, what their purchasing habits, opinions, preferences and relationships are. Many intelligence services would like to get users' connection logs, which would allow them to gather all this information.
The threat to democracy posed by this informational totalism is such that economic operators should either be prohibited from simultaneously carrying out an activity as an access provider and an activity of creating or exploiting informational content, or access providers should be prohibited from recording users' activities on the Internet.