A dramatic increase in hostile foreign interference in France, including attacks against diasporas, is a violation of French sovereignty, the country's head of domestic security, Celine Berthon, said on Tuesday.
"In recent years – and particularly since 2022 – we have witnessed a massive, meteoric rise in acts of interference on national territory," Ms Berthon told a panel in Paris, organised by the largest employer federation in France, the Medef.
European officials are increasingly concerned by so-called hybrid attacks that combine cyber warfare, disinformation and strikes against infrastructure.
"The war in Ukraine has obviously provided particularly fertile ground for this, but other conflicts have, too. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has led to actions of this nature," Ms Berthon said.
"These attacks occur in physical spaces – you have heard about the Stars of David, the red hands, the pig heads and the vandalism targeting places of worship – but they also take place in cyberspace."
Ms Berthon was speaking alongside other top French security officials who identified Russia as the main culprit. Incidents linked to Russia include placing severed pigs' heads outside mosques in Paris last year, and tagging red hands on the Shoah Memorial in the capital in 2024. France has Europe's largest Muslim and Jewish minorities.
"All of this effectively contributes to the onset of a war – not a physical or military war, nor one necessarily waged openly on our own soil, yet one that already involves attacks targeting our country," Ms Berthon said.
Divisive issues
Iran is also among countries believed to be behind physical attacks against Iranian critics living in France and in its European neighbours. Tehran has been linked to bomb attacks on Israeli and Jewish interests after the US and Israel launched joint attacks against Iran on February 28.
"States pursuing these actions have multiple objectives. These may include destabilising France by undermining the institutional balance, eroding our independence, and fragmenting our society … by exploiting highly divisive issues to pit members of the national community against one another," Ms Berthon said.
Their objectives also involve "monitoring, or even suppressing, members of diaspora communities on our soil. This amounts to an importation of foreign laws on to our territory, which constitutes a violation of our sovereignty," Ms Berthon added.
She gave the example of a recent incident at Leipzig/Halle airport in Germany this month, when a drone packed with explosives was found near a parked Ukrainian cargo plane.
"We must consider the possibility of more direct, violent hostile actions occurring on our national territory," Ms Berthon said.
