Under swiss law an email provider has to comply. French activists didn't protect themselves with tor/vpn. For the VPN this is different, swiss jurisdiction don't have to snitch their clients. Remember that when you use VPN the data center which routes your traffic is what matters. For example, if the data center routing your traffic is in France, law can just go to the DC provider and France will comply and snitch on you, and PROTON can't do shit.

That's why functions like secure core (just a hop on swiss DC) makes sense, because the French DT will snitch swiss IP and not yourse.

VPN shield is just as good as the law the countries you go through.