Skip to content

Understand: history, media, public finances and elected officials

Documented files and a selection of independent observatories to understand what social movements have won, check who owns the media, find verified public-finance figures and track elected officials. Click any organization to open its contact card (website, thematic files and social media).

Documented files on this site

  • Historical milestones

    From the storming of the Bastille to today's movements, and what the street won: paid holidays, the right to vote, bills withdrawn.

    See the timeline

  • Democratic channels flouted

    The 2005 referendum bypassed, the Citizens' Convention for Climate emptied, 49.3, grievance books never published, governments in quick succession.

    See the timeline

  • Documented repression and debunked claims

    Violence committed during policing of protests and official statements later contradicted by the facts, with their evidence.

    See the cases

  • Injured and killed at protests

    Reference censuses and established cases of people killed or seriously injured during policing operations.

    See the records

  • Why property gets smashed at protests

    Who smashes, why, what studies say about effectiveness, what you risk.

    Read

Who owns the media and how to check information

Guide: avoid disinformation

Public budget, debt, corporate subsidies and tax fraud

  • Public budget and tax breakdown: FIPECO (former Court of Audit magistrates and INSEE statisticians) explains in plain-language sheets where public revenue comes from (the weight of VAT compared with income and corporate tax) and where spending goes.
  • Unconditional corporate subsidies (CICE, R&D tax credit, social-contribution cuts): the reference academic study by IRES (“Capitalism on life support”) catalogues all public subsidies to businesses (~€157bn in 2019, the largest budget item) and the lack of social or environmental conditions1, while the Observatoire des multinationales tracks dividends and layoffs at major recipient corporations.
  • Tax fraud, tax havens vs benefit fraud and non-take-up: the EU Tax Observatory and the Plateforme Paradis Fiscaux et Judiciaires quantify tax evasion by multinationals and ultra-high-net-worth individuals. On official orders of magnitude, Vie publique's overview notes that tax fraud (and undeclared work by employers) far exceeds social-benefit fraud, which itself is smaller than non-take-up of social rights (eligible people not claiming RSA or activity bonuses).2
  • Inequality and wealth distribution: Observatoire des inégalités and WID.world.

Guide: talk to your loved ones

Monitoring elected officials: votes and court convictions

  • Votes and parliamentary participation: Datan and Poligraph (French Parliament) as well as HowTheyVote.eu (European Parliament) publish detailed voting records and roll-call participation rates (which only measure plenary roll-call votes, not committee or constituency work).
  • Court convictions and public integrity (corruption, embezzlement of public funds, fictitious jobs, sexual violence…): tracked by Anticor, Mediapart, Poligraph and Casier Politique (the last two rely on AI extraction from Wikipedia, Wikidata or the press: check each record against its source). The only official statistics, without names, come from the French Anti-Corruption Agency.3

How the groups voted on our causes

Six National Assembly votes on purchasing power, democracy, housing, immigration, women's rights and tax justice. The table shows each group's majority position; in brackets, the breakdown (for / against / abstention) when the group was split. The vote of each MP is on each Datan page.

Date and vote Result Left (LFI, PS, Greens, GDR) LIOT Macron's camp (Renaissance, MoDem, Horizons) LR RN
20 Jul 2022 — Minimum wage at €1,500 net4 Rejected For For Against Against Against
20 Mar 2023 — No-confidence motion after Article 49.3 on pensions56 Rejected by 9 votes For For Against Against (19 for out of 61) For
4 Apr 2023 — "Anti-squat" law (up to 3 years in prison)7 Adopted Against For (12 / 0 / 5) For For For
19 Dec 2023 — Immigration law8 Adopted Against Split (8 / 8 / 5) For (incl. Renaissance 131 / 20 / 17, MoDem 30 / 5 / 15) For For (88 / 0 / 0)
30 Jan 2024 — Abortion rights in the Constitution9 Adopted For For For For (40 / 15 / 4) For (46 / 12 / 14)
31 Oct 2025 — Zucman tax on fortunes above €100 million10 Rejected For No position Against Against Against

For a no-confidence motion, only "for" votes are counted: "against" here means the group did not vote for it. In 2025, LR is called Droite républicaine, and the UDR group, allied with the RN, also voted against the Zucman tax.10

Check a vote yourself: search for the bill on Datan, open the vote, then look at how each group and your MP voted. For the European Parliament: HowTheyVote.eu.

Sources

Each note links to the source of the information. Most sources are in French. Laws change: check the date of the source and, if in doubt, ask a lawyer.

  1. IRES (CLERSÉ-CNRS) — Capitalism on life support: measuring public subsidies to French businesses (2022) · AI-sourced on · awaiting human check ↩

  2. Vie publique — Tax fraud and social benefit fraud: overview · AI-sourced on · awaiting human check ↩

  3. French Anti-Corruption Agency — Probity offences in court decisions, national aggregated data 2021-2025 (data.gouv.fr) · AI-sourced on · awaiting human check ↩

  4. Datan — Raise the minimum wage to €1,500 net (20 July 2022) · AI-sourced on · awaiting human check ↩

  5. Datan — Pension reform: cross-party no-confidence motion (20 March 2023) · AI-sourced on · awaiting human check ↩

  6. LCP — No-confidence motions: the government survives by 9 votes · AI-sourced on · awaiting human check ↩

  7. Datan — Bill to protect housing against unlawful occupation (4 April 2023) · AI-sourced on · awaiting human check ↩

  8. Datan — Immigration bill (19 December 2023) · AI-sourced on · awaiting human check ↩

  9. Datan — Bill to enshrine abortion rights in the Constitution (30 January 2024) · AI-sourced on · awaiting human check ↩

  10. Datan — Introduce the Zucman tax on fortunes above €100 million (31 October 2025) · AI-sourced on · awaiting human check ↩↩

SOS