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France’s competition authority has ordered Meta to resume talks with French press groups over copyright payments, saying the company’s approach “caused serious and immediate harm to the press sector” and weakened protections for news content.
The order follows complaints from two organisations representing French news publishers that Meta failed to reach new agreements with: Société des Droits Voisins de la Presse (DVP), which manages rights on behalf of publishers and news agencies, and l’Alliance de la Presse d’Information Générale (APIG), an industry group representing around 300 publications.
Their complaints centre on neighbouring rights or related rights, a form of copyright-related protection that gives press publishers and news agencies the right to seek payment when online platforms reuse or display parts of their content.
The rules stem from the European Union’s 2019 Copyright Directive and have become a key tool in France’s efforts to force major US tech firms to negotiate deals with publishers when news content appears on their platforms.
Tech companies, including Meta and Google, signed deals with French press outlets in 2021 and 2022, respectively, to comply with the neighbouring rights rules.
However, Meta’s agreements with the two organisations expired in December 2024 for DVP members and January 2025 for APIG members. The parties failed to reach new deals.
As a result, APIG and DVP members no longer receive compensation from Meta for the reuse or display of their materials, while their press content has continued to be distributed on Meta’s services, according to the authority.
Why did France order Meta back to the table?
The French authority, Autorité de la concurrence, also ordered Meta to provide the information needed to assess payments within 15 days. It said the company’s practices were likely to amount to “an abuse of [a] dominant position”.
The regulator also criticised Meta’s decision to exclude, in principle, most of its services, including Instagram and Threads, from the scope of negotiations, except for press content shared by users on Facebook.
It said such an approach could weaken France’s neighbouring rights rules.
The case comes as news outlets argue that major platforms benefit from distributing or displaying original journalistic content, eventually leading to profits that platforms like Meta earn from advertisements.
France’s competition watchdog has previously targeted Google over similar issues.
In 2024, it fined the company €250 million for failing to comply with commitments linked to neighbouring rights negotiations, including transparency obligations and the use of press content to train artificial intelligence tools without properly informing publishers.
The order against Meta is an interim measure, meaning it does not settle the final amount the company may have to pay.
Instead, it forces the company back to the negotiating table while the authority continues examining the broader case.