If you're a cafe, you offer free internet or your business dies.

Less so in France: virtually everybody that would sip 2-3EUR coffees has a 19EUR cellular plan with unlimited data. And that's the price if you're not bundling and not playing off providers off eachother.

Free wifi is for the non-EU tourists.

Can confirm. Having dropped my mobile in the bath (...) I needed wifi yesterday and only the fifth café I tried in provincial France had wifi available. (And that didn't work until I adjusted my settings to use the DHCP server's provided DNS...)

Now I wonder if it's this law that made it not worth the effort for them.

Many EU tourists as well, here you can still get sub GB plans, and unlimited is twice what it is in France, and if you're not savvy, four times is possible too.

Free, please conquer the rest of Europe too!

It might depends on the bars, but those where I've been in France usually don't have it

People expect places like this to have free WiFi.

I see. The word "obligation" threw me off because it is generally understood to mean the actions you're legally or morally bound to.

This sounds more like market forces, competition.

Thanks for the clarification.

I'm much obliged.