French Antitrust Watchdog Orders Meta to Resume Copyright Negotiations With News Publishers
France's Autorité de la concurrence found Meta likely abused its dominant position and ordered it to negotiate in good faith with press publishers over unpaid neighbouring rights.
Overview
France’s competition authority, the Autorité de la concurrence, has ordered Meta to resume negotiations with French press publishers over unpaid copyright compensation, finding that the company’s conduct during talks is “likely to constitute an abuse of dominant position” that has caused “serious and immediate harm to the press sector,” according to the regulator’s press release.
The interim measures, issued as Decision 26-MC-01 and Decision 26-MC-02 on July 8, 2026, came in response to complaints filed by the Société des droits voisins de la presse (DVP) and the Alliance de la presse d’information générale (APIG), the two organizations that manage neighbouring-rights compensation on behalf of French press agencies and publishers.
What We Know
The dispute centers on France’s “neighbouring rights” (droits voisins) regime, created by a French law of July 24, 2019 transposing the EU copyright directive of April 17, 2019, which requires platforms to compensate publishers when they reuse or display press content. Under that law, Meta had reached two prior agreements with APIG and DVP — one in December 2021 and another in June 2024 — but those deals covered use of content only until December 31, 2024 for DVP members and January 31, 2025 for APIG members. A new round of negotiations that started in 2024 broke down without agreement on remuneration amount, scope of uses, or which Meta services would be covered, and publishers have received no compensation from Meta since the earlier deals expired.
According to PPC Land, publishers went unpaid for approximately 18 months before the ruling. The outlet also reports the legal basis traces to EU Directive 2019/790, and that the Autorité previously fined Google 250 million euros in March 2024 for breaching its own neighbouring-rights commitments to French publishers, a case that established the regulator’s enforcement pattern in this area.
The Autorité’s press release lays out the core of its case against Meta: the company is accused of trying to impose its own method for calculating remuneration while refusing to give APIG and DVP the information they needed to objectively assess Meta’s offers. The regulator found Meta likely holds a dominant position in the market for personal social networking services, citing “the size of Facebook’s user base, which is significantly larger than that of any of its competitors.”
According to Euronews, the regulator specifically criticized Meta for limiting the scope of negotiations to press content shared by users on Facebook while excluding its other services, including Instagram and Threads. The Autorité’s own release states: “Meta’s decision to exclude, as a matter of principle, all of Meta’s services distributing news content, with the exception of content posted by users on Facebook, from the scope of negotiations could undermine the provisions of the Law on Related Rights.”
The Autorité ordered four specific obligations: Meta must negotiate in good faith with press agencies and publishers using transparent, objective and non-discriminatory criteria covering content reuse from the start of 2025; it must provide the information necessary for successful negotiations within 15 days; it must refrain from altering how APIG and DVP members’ content is displayed across Meta’s services during the negotiation period; and it must submit regular compliance reports to the regulator.
APIG represents approximately 300 French publications, according to Euronews. The Autorité’s release states that the ongoing non-payment has worsened “the precarious situation faced by a large number of press agencies and publishers, who are deprived of the resources essential for sustaining their operations and maintaining the quality of information.”
What We Don’t Know
The measures are interim, not a final ruling — the Autorité’s order compels Meta back to the table and forces disclosure of pricing information, but it does not itself set a remuneration figure. The broader case, including whatever penalty Meta might eventually face for the conduct described in the interim decision, remains under examination. Neither the regulator’s release nor the press coverage reviewed specifies the exact financial information Meta must hand over within the 15-day window, only that it must be sufficient for APIG and DVP to evaluate Meta’s offers.
Analysis
The order against Meta follows the same regulator’s 2024 precedent against Google, when the Autorité fined Google 250 million euros in March 2024 for breaching its neighbouring-rights commitments to French publishers, according to PPC Land. With the underlying French law and EU directive already tested against Google, the Autorité’s interim decision against Meta suggests the regulator is applying the same abuse-of-dominance framework to other platforms that distribute news content without compensating publishers under the neighbouring-rights regime.