Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not saying it necessarily applies to this case, but France, like all countries in the EU, does not have actual freedom of speech.
It's ... complicated. France does have a concept of "liberté d'expression" (literally "freedom of speech"), but it isn't equivalent to the US 1st amendment. That won't help you if you don't read french, but you can see here that while the "Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen" from 1789 has a concept somehow similar to "freedom of speech", a lot of exceptions have been created since then. https://fr.wikipe…
Absolute freedom of speech is indeed not existent anywhere, and probably impractical. But US-level freedom of speech is fine (which is what we usually talk about when we say "freedom of speech"), and France does not have that.