And thus we arrive at the underlying problem. How about we address the root instead of the symptoms?

out of the French control given that Google is an American business and it doesn't look like the US is ever going to seriously bring anti-trust to bear on tech. So countries have to do what they can locally.

Is it really out of their control? What happens if they say "Google Search and Google Play can't be the same company in France"?

Option one, they separate to keep the market. Probably not, but maybe if the whole EU does it.

Option two, Google is banned from France and some competitors take root. Those competitors are not going to limit themselves to the market in France, so now there is more competition everywhere.

Either one is a pretty good kick in the pants that would increase the level of competition.