Regulating to Protect, Innovate, and Endure

In public debate, regulation and innovation are often portrayed as opposing forces. On one side stands the freedom to create, experiment, and invent; on the other, the constraints of rules, oversight, and compliance. It is an appealing narrative but also a deeply misleading one.

Economic history tells a very different story. Breakthrough innovations only achieve lasting success when they operate within a framework of trust. Aviation would never have become a mass mode of transportation without rigorous safety standards. The pharmaceutical industry could not function without robust evaluation protocols. Financial markets would not exist in their current form without common rules safeguarding their integrity.
The real question, then, is not whether to regulate, but how to regulate effectively.
In the digital economy, this issue has become central. Artificial intelligence, online platforms, data, and new digital services raise legitimate concerns about citizen protection, economic sovereignty, and collective security. Faced with these challenges, Europe has chosen to act: the GDPR, the Digital Services Act (DSA), the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the Data Act, the AI Act… Rarely has a continent produced so many regulatory frameworks in such a short period of time !

This ambition reflects a profoundly European vision one that rejects the notion that technological progress should evolve independently of democratic principles, the protection of individual rights, or the rule of law. At a time when technology is reshaping our societies at an unprecedented pace and challenging our social model, this is a genuine strength.

When the rule benefits those who bypass it.

But regulation is not an end in itself. Its value lies solely in the outcomes it delivers.

And here we must acknowledge an uncomfortable paradox: Europe is sometimes quicker to produce new rules than to ensure that they actually achieve their intended objectives.
In some cases, the accumulation of regulatory obligations ends up favouring already dominant players, who possess the financial and organizational resources required to absorb compliance costs. Economic research has repeatedly shown that new entrants, SMEs, and high-growth companies bear a disproportionately heavier burden.
The danger, therefore, is that an ever-expanding body of regulation ultimately undermines Europe’s ability to nurture the very companies that will drive tomorrow’s innovation. Current debates surrounding artificial intelligence and the European cloud ecosystem illustrate this challenge perfectly.

This issue extends well beyond these sectors. Across many areas of the digital economy, companies that comply with the rules shoulder the overwhelming majority of regulatory obligations, while those that circumvent them often continue to operate with a lasting competitive advantage.
The online gaming industry in which Betclic operates is a particularly clear example. Licensed operators invest heavily in player protection, anti-money laundering measures, the prevention of harmful gambling behaviours, and data security. At the same time, hundreds of illegal operators target French and European consumers from abroad without complying with any of these obligations.

This raises a fundamental question: what is the purpose of regulation if it is rigorously enforced against those who already comply, yet insufficiently applied to those who deliberately evade it?

Towards regulation that is measured by its results

In a world where economic borders are increasingly porous, the effectiveness of regulation should be judged by its tangible impact. Does it genuinely change behaviour? Does it meaningfully strengthen the protection of citizens? Does it reduce the risks it was designed to address? Or does it, unintentionally, push users toward less responsible actors operating outside the regulatory framework?

The real challenge of modern regulation is not merely drafting new rules—it is ensuring that those rules are effectively enforced.
The objective, therefore, is to strike the right balance. We must protect creativity, intellectual property, children, and society’s most vulnerable groups. But we must also preserve our capacity to innovate and to develop our own technologies. To achieve this, Europe—and France in particular—should probably enter a new phase: one centred on simplification, evaluation, and continuous adaptation.

Simplification does not mean deregulation. Rather, it means focusing public action on what genuinely creates collective value, systematically assessing the impact of regulatory measures, correcting those that fail to deliver, and adapting them as technologies evolve.

Ultimately, the debate is not between regulation and innovation. It is between two different visions of regulation: one that is satisfied with producing rules, and another that is committed to delivering results.
The first measures success by the number of laws and regulations enacted. The second measures success by its ability to genuinely protect citizens while enabling innovation to flourish.

It is this second path that France should explore more actively. In the fast-moving and highly competitive digital economy, the best regulation is not the one that simply exists on paper—it is the one that works.