To affect the project as a whole? Probably not much short term. But they can make things difficult for French users by either banning the OS, or trying to ban bootloader unlocking in general. And sure it will be largely ineffective and difficult to enforce to start with, but it won't stop them trying like with all the age verification bullshit thats popped up everywhere recently. Longer term they can do what Denmark are doing with chat control and keep trying to make it EU law every couple of months until eventually it passes.

And they will get away with it because the average citizen doesn't care or even know. Most people don't even know that installing alternate OSes is possible, and of the ones that do many don't bother with it themselves. And as for an OS based around cyber security and privacy? For most people cyber security is just the thing that means their password has to be Password1! instead of password, and privacy is just something schizophrenics and criminals want.