The governing party of President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, scrambling to save a law that would cut off Internet service to people who make repeated illegal downloads, is threatening to block a European Union telecommunications bill that would undermine the legal foundation of the French plan.
The E.U. bill would create a new telecommunication regulator in Europe, enable regulators to separate dominant phone companies from their networks, and increase coordination of broadcast frequencies within Europe.
But the measure prohibits the exact proposal that France is considering — allowing a government agency to cut off the Internet service of E.U. citizens. The French National Assembly, which unexpectedly rejected the proposal this month, is scheduled to revisit the plan next week.
Representatives of Mr. Sarkozy have spent the past week lobbying Brussels to eliminate the clause, which is part of legislation that has been two years in the making.
“What the conservatives are doing now is holding the entire European telecoms package hostage because of the French,” said Raphael Delarue, a legislative assistant to Guy Bono, the French member of the European Parliament who proposed the ban on administrative sanctions for Internet piracy last year.
Mr. Bono’s amendment was approved overwhelmingly by Parliament in September. It would require E.U. governments to obtain court orders before disconnecting Internet service.
The committee in Brussels debating the telecommunications package, the Industry, Technology and Research committee, is expected to vote on the package Tuesday.
The committee’s chairwoman, Catherine Trautmann, a former French minister of culture, last week offered European telecommunications ministers a compromise that would reduce Mr. Bono’s ban to a “recital,” a form of legislative preamble that would guide the ban’s transcription into law.
Recitals are considered by some to have less effect than if the ban were inserted as an article in the body of legislation. But E.U. ministers last week indicated…