VoxPublic brings together French civil society groups to foster social and environmental justice, fight discrimination and promote the rule of law and civil liberties. Laure Paradis, VoxPublic’s mission manager, recounts how in 2025 they coordinated a wide range of civil society groups from all corners of France in common purposes.
“Over the past year we facilitated a network of around 150 organisations working on very different topics, either at local or national level.
It’s an open, wide network and we created a safe space for them to share their expertise and experience. The goal is cross-sector collaboration, and to think about what tools organisations need if they’re suffering attacks from different groups supporting authoritarian ideas and values – or whatever other challenges they are facing.
We have monthly online meetings where we share who is doing what and identify peoples’ needs, as well as other longer, more strategic meetings.
France is entering a long period of elections, and within the network there are different working groups, with a smaller number of organisations being very active working on strategies for the elections. There are also other groups, such as one working on a media strategy for how to disseminate civil society’s messages, and a group who created an ongoing training helping organisations identify their vulnerabilities and how to mitigate risks.
We can see during our meetings that civil society is extremely dynamic
Civic space in France is shrinking – but French civil society is vibrant. There are many organisations promoting and defending democratic values everywhere. This is why it’s important to not always look to create new projects, new tools, because they already exist most of the time. But we need to make sure that everyone is communicating and sharing. We can see during our meetings that civil society is extremely dynamic, even though it’s more complicated because funding is decreasing, and there are some security issues – but civil society’s energy is strong.”
Laure Paradis of VoxPublic discusses how they brought together a network of around 150 organisations from across France to share expertise, identify common challenges, and coordinate responses.
Le Fonds pour une Presse Libre (FPL) defends independent journalism and media pluralism in France. In 2025 FPL joined with international NGO Media Defence to establish the first legal aid fund of its kind in France, called Ripostes. The fund supports independent press targeted by clearly abusive or unfounded judicial or administrative proceedings: a growing problem in France. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) recently condemned France’s extensive use of strategic lawsuits against public participation – known as SLAPPs – and the country ranks fifth in Europe for where they are most frequently used.
Within two weeks FPL and Media Defence reached their initial goal of raising EUR 100,000 in five days. Charlotte Clavreul, FPL’s Executive Director, explains what happened:
“At a time when the media is struggling financially, press freedom is declining in France, and SLAPPs are to blame. Many independent media organisations asked us to support them. We work closely with Media Defence, whose mission is to defend and protect independent journalists around the world. So in 2025, we joined forces to set up a crowdsourced legal fund. We managed to collect €100,000 in two weeks. It was a great surprise. Since the fund was created in October 2025, we’ve helped five independent media outlets in their legal battles. We get requests for help every month and we’ve already spent 25% of the funds we’ve raised.
The goal of the fund is to support independent media against increasingly aggressive political and economic actors, who are striking at independent media’s finances, and who aim to intimidate journalists. We want the fear to shift to the other side, so that they are held accountable, through for example, financial penalties or being made to publish court judgements on their websites.”
The goal of the fund is to support independent media against increasingly aggressive political and economic actors, who are striking at independent media’s finances, and who aim to intimidate journalists
This article is part of Civitates Annual Report 2025, which will be published in May 2026. To discover more stories like this one, stay in touch by signing up for our newsletter or follow us on LinkedIn.
