Who would dare criticize the melodies and thunderous sounds of the 50th Côte d'Opale Festival? And who would have the whim to cut the power to the Poulpaphone nursery? That's a tune Frédéric Cuvillier and his big band can play on repeat; singing all summer long - just like in any other season - is perfectly fine with us. ---- Before the day really heated up, we, casual observers, with our little bucket in hand, set off as respectful citizens to remove, while also doing something useful, posters more deeply rooted in our shores than the very official Street Art. The so-called "free posting" boards would do the trick. However, besides the fact that these boards are currently reserved for institutional music, their number seems to be dwindling like everything else in the heatwave.
Properly Designated Notice Boards
The law requires municipalities to provide free posting boards. The existence of these boards, intended to ensure "freedom of opinion," is governed by Article L. 581-13 of the Environmental Code. This article specifies that it is the mayor's responsibility to designate spaces for displaying opinions and advertising related to the activities of non-profit organizations. Article R. 581-2 of the same code specifies the minimum surface areas that municipalities must provide, based on the number of inhabitants:
- 4 m² for municipalities with fewer than 2,000 inhabitants;
- 4 m² plus 2 m² for each additional 2,000 inhabitants beyond 2,000, for municipalities with 2,000 to 10,000 inhabitants;
-12 m² plus 5 m² per 10,000 inhabitants beyond 10,000, for other municipalities.
The law also requires that no point within the urban area be more than 1 km from a sign. Finally, municipalities are required to inform citizens (directly or upon request) of the locations for free expression available within their territory.(1)
See also
Thus, in the Opalie region, Boulogne-sur-Mer is right on target with its 11 signs (27 m²) for its 40,910 inhabitants - 1,000 fewer and one sign is lost. Meanwhile, in Saint-Martin, there are 9 locations for 10,999 hectares - more than necessary? As for Wimille, there are no billboards for 3,888 hectares - one would have been enough.(2) This local photo illustrates a simple fact: municipalities literally do as they please when allocating space for posting notices.
More than 60% of municipalities nationwide do not comply with current regulations. While the prefectures "allow the State to ensure compliance with legal obligations regarding free posting," checks, formal notices to comply with the regulations, and the census of these violations are nonexistent.(3) In his written question to the Government on September 30, 2025, LFI (La France Insoumise) MP Bastien Lachaud notes that "[some]town halls, reluctantly complying with the law, circumvent its spirit. They plan for free posting boards in notoriously unfrequented locations, on the outskirts of towns, in dead ends, behind garbage rooms, and other such schemes." Some go so far as to install billboards where the side designated for free posting is located just centimeters from a wall, making it impossible to post any information on them, let alone read it, while outwardly complying with the legal obligation. Others play it dangerous by allowing electrical boxes as a legal medium, even though they are explicitly considered illegal flyposting! Boulogne solved the problem by offering them to local artists for a street art project. (4) Even when untouched, many are covered in plaster, no doubt to protect them from foam party advertising.
Political expression: democratization...
In 1789, the Revolution seized control of freedom of expression, which until then had been reserved solely for royal and religious authorities. Besides the explosion of political publications, the walls became covered with notices, rants, news, and reports of political club meetings-of all persuasions, including monarchists-making their locations places for gatherings and public debate. Freedom of expression was absolute (for a time...); anyone could post a handwritten text as they pleased, from a radical diatribe to a poem. Most used colored paper to avoid being confused with laws, decrees, trial announcements (or their outcomes), and other official publications printed on white paper. This practice still exists...
As early as 1830 - and after the Napoleonic era, which curtailed virtually all freedoms, and the Restoration, uneasy with the press - Charles X sided with Polignac, the ultra-royalist Prime Minister: "It would be to deny the obvious not to see newspapers as the principal source of calamities threatening the kingdom[...]. No force, it must be admitted, is capable of resisting a solvent as potent as the press." These repressive measures in all areas would culminate in the July Revolution.
In 1848, posters, thanks to the development of lithography linked to industrial growth, were mass-produced and enriched by a colorful, allegorical revolutionary art, powerfully evocative of socialism and the Revolution, with striking slogans. The bourgeoisie will no longer be able to stem the inevitable tide of social and political demands, calls for strikes, and mobilization of the working class.
1871: Strangled by the war waged against it by the government in exile in Versailles, allied with the Prussians victorious in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the Paris Commune will be forced to ban the reactionary press.
...a smokescreen
The famous law on freedom of the press of July 29, 1881, did not appear out of thin air. The ruling classes imposed a legal framework on all publications, as well as on public displays in particular. It is also a prime example of how the French "legislature" can concoct schemes to pull the wool over our eyes. Often considered the founding legal text of freedom of the press and freedom of expression, this law effectively allowed the press to breathe and expand. But it is also the text that gives the Paris Commune a taste of its own medicine: the requirement to deposit a security deposit as a prerequisite for publishing newspapers is reinstated. The Republicans come to power in 1876. Five years of tough negotiations with the right wing of the "moral order" movement and the opinion press will finally conclude with the law we know today.(6)
So?
Well, not much!
Aside from the measures taken over the centuries by various parties to endorse the masses of regulations-whose mathematical formulas we neither know nor want to know-we will continue to express ourselves freely, participating in the well-known local political ferment.
Moreover, everyone involved in politics, whether professional or self-serving, will, in a few months, be lining up along dozens of linear meters of reserved and, in principle, sacred billboards. At least during the first round of the presidential election. After that, the bargaining will be in full swing.
The worst enemy of freedom of expression is the stifling of political debate. Let's get back to basics: let's re-wild the struggle! Let's be rugged, uncompromising, sticky as glue.
Keep in mind, comrade, that from its very adoption, the 1881 law is most often expressed in three words: NO POSTING.
(1) In most municipalities, the posting of opinions and non-profit organizations is permitted on construction site hoardings - Article L581-16 of the Environmental Code: "Municipalities have the right to use construction site hoardings for their own benefit as a medium for commercial advertising or free posting as defined in Article L. 581-13, when their installation has been authorized by the road authority." Town halls are required to publish the list of these authorized locations. Not found in Boulogne.
(2) Source: https://cocoricarte.fr/, a government website which you should visit to see the existence and locations of these panels. There is no equivalent on the Municipality's website.
(3) https://bastienlachaud.fr/2025/09/30/respect-de-la-loi-sur-les-panneaux-daffichage-libre/. Note the parallel fieldwork being carried out in several French cities to get free posting panels installed in your municipality - Online Help - Popular Action
(4) Well, there are still some left, but shh.
(5) Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of August 26, 1789
Article 10: No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, even religious ones, provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law.
Article 11. The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: every citizen may therefore speak, write, and print freely, subject to being held accountable for the abuse of this freedom in the cases determined by law.
(6) https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/id/LEGITEXT000006070722
Boulogne-sur-Mer, July 18, 2026
https://lamouetteenragee.noblogs.org/post/2026/07/20/la-chere-liberte-dafficher/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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