In July 2021, the Pegasus Project revealed that French president Emmanuel Macron, his former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and 14 other French ministers had been selected by Moroccan secret services for potential surveillance with Pegasus. It was the first time an investigation revealed the potential use of NSO Group’s spyware against a head of state while in office. Many French politicians were also on the list.
A few days after the revelations, French authorities found that the phones of three French journalists identified in the Pegasus Project had been infected with the spyware, the first time an official authority confirmed the technical findings of the Pegasus Project. According to Mediapart, French authorities also later identified the "presence of suspicious markers" in the phones of several ministers in office.
Following the Pegasus Project revelations, French president Macron changed his phone, convened an emergency meeting on cybersecurity and engaged in diplomatic discussions with the government of Israel, which will continued over the following months. France asked the Israeli government to block French phone codes from the numbers that can be targeted/to protect French numbers (France's Armies Minister told Le Monde at the time that Israeli authorities had replied that, “this would be the case”).
In October and November 2021, several media reported on the French government’s alleged intention to buy Pegasus. French radio Europe 1 first claimed that France had been in discussions with NSO Group before the French head of state allegedly cut in in favor of a “no” six months before the Pegasus Project was published. MIT Technology Review stated that the French government was in the process of acquiring the spyware but that negotiations were ended when it was revealed that French ministers could be potential victims of Pegasus (the government denied having ever been in the process of buying the spyware). Le Monde finally wrote that France was approached by NSO Group in 2019 and 2020, but that the government officially refused to sign a contract with the company at the end of 2020.
French prosecutors opened an investigation on July 20, 2021. This was entrusted to an investigating judge, AFP reported in early July 2022. The investigation was opened "against X" and covered a large number of potential offenses, according to the agency. Unlike a prosecutor, in France, an investigating judge is independent of the ministry of Justice.
In April 2022, Amnesty International and media outlets reported that the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the Ligue des droits de l’homme (LDH) and French-Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri had filed a complaint in France against NSO Group for illegally infiltrating the lawyer’s phone in the territories of Palestine and in France.
In May 2023, French news outlet Mediapart revealed that France’s former Armies Minister Florence Parly was targeted with Pegasus while she was minister, bringing the total number of known French ministers whose phones were targeted with NGO Group’s spyware to seven.