France's competition authority today ordered Meta to resume negotiations in good faith with the country's press publishers and news agencies, giving the company 15 days to hand over the financial information those publishers need to assess remuneration under neighbouring rights law. The Autorité de la concurrence issued two decisions, 26-MC-01 and 26-MC-02, in response to complaints filed separately by the Alliance de la Presse d'Information Générale, known as APIG, and the Société des Droits Voisins de la Presse, known as DVP. Both organizations had accused Meta of trying to impose its own valuation method for neighbouring rights payments while withholding data that would let publishers check whether the offers were fair.

The regulator's finding was blunt. According to the Authority's published summary of the decision, Meta's practices are likely to constitute an abuse of a dominant position and cause serious and immediate harm to the press sector, a conclusion serious enough to justify interim measures before any final ruling on the case. Interim measures of this kind are not routine; French competition law reserves them for situations where waiting for a full investigation to conclude would itself cause damage that cannot later be undone.

Behind the legal language sits a simple financial fact. Members of APIG and DVP have not received any remuneration from Meta for neighbouring rights since their previous agreements lapsed, according to the Authority. DVP's agreement expired on December 31, 2024, and APIG's expired a month later, on January 31, 2025. That means, by the time of today's decision, some publishers had gone roughly a year and a half without payment while their content continued to circulate across Meta's platforms.

What neighbouring rights cover, and why the talks broke down

Neighbouring rights exist because of a piece of European legislation with a specific date attached: the Copyright Directive of April 17, 2019, formally Directive 2019/790. That directive created a right for press publishers and news agencies to be paid when online platforms reuse snippets, headlines, or previews of their journalism. France transposed the directive into domestic law five months later, through the Act of July 24, 2019, and that French statute is the one the Authority is now enforcing against Meta.

The mechanism is meant to work through negotiation rather than a fixed tariff. Publishers and platforms sit down, agree on a valuation methodology, and settle on remuneration. Meta had, in fact, done exactly that once already. The company signed agreements with APIG in December 2021 and with DVP in June 2024, both of which paid for the use of neighbouring-rights content on Meta's services going back to when the French law took effect. Those agreements ran through the end of 2024 for DVP members and the end of January 2025 for APIG members.

When the parties opened a fresh round of talks in 2024 to replace those expiring deals, the negotiation collapsed. According to the Authority, no agreement was reached on three separate points: the amount of remuneration owed, the scope of uses that neighbouring rights should cover, and which specific Meta services fall within that scope. Each of those three sticking points recurs throughout the Authority's reasoning, and together they describe a negotiation that failed not over a single number but over the entire framework for arriving at one.

Two specific findings of abuse

The Authority's decision rests on a market definition it says is, at this stage of the investigation, reasonably clear. Meta is likely to hold a dominant position in the market for personal social networking services, including hybrid platforms, a conclusion the regulator based on the size of Facebook's user base relative to competitors and on the breadth of needs that Meta's platforms serve for those users. Dominance alone is not illegal under EU or French competition law. What matters is how a dominant company behaves, and the Authority identified two behaviors it considers problematic.

The first concerns valuation. Unfair trading conditions, in the Authority's framing, arose because Meta sought to impose its own valuation methodology without taking into account the alternative methods proposed by APIG and DVP. The regulator went further on this point, noting that Meta's decision to exclude, as a matter of principle, nearly all of its services from the scope of negotiations - carving out only content posted directly by users on Facebook - could itself amount to undermining the provisions of the law on related rights. In other words, the dispute was not confined to disagreement over a price; it extended to disagreement over which of Meta's products should even be counted.

The second concerns access to information. Circumvention of the law, as the Authority terms it, describes a separate failure: refusing to provide publishers and press agencies with the information necessary to inform a proper discussion, or providing that information under substandard conditions and with delay. The 2019 law was built on the premise that publishers cannot negotiate a fair price if they cannot see the revenue their content generates or how it is actually used. According to the Authority, that information asymmetry was exacerbated by Meta's failure to inform publishers of the revenue generated from the use of their content, along with the actual ways in which that content is used across Meta's services.

The four obligations imposed today

The interim measures translate those findings into four concrete obligations, each with defined boundaries.

  • Meta must negotiate in good faith with publishers and news agencies, applying transparent, objective, and non-discriminatory criteria. Crucially, these negotiations must cover the period from the start of 2025 onward, meaning Meta cannot treat the gap since the previous agreements lapsed as a period exempt from eventual compensation.
  • Meta must provide, within 15 days, the information necessary for the parties to conduct those negotiations successfully. The Authority states that a precise list of the items Meta must hand over is set out in the decisions themselves, though the regulator's public summary does not itemize that list.
  • Meta must not degrade, throughout the negotiation period, the terms under which content from APIG and DVP members is displayed across any of Meta's online services. This provision is designed to prevent Meta from retaliating against publishers during talks by reducing the visibility or reach of their content.
  • Meta must submit regular reports to the Authority documenting how it is complying with each of the three preceding injunctions.

The Authority specified that these measures will remain in force until it issues its decision on the merits of the underlying case, a process that runs on a separate and typically longer timeline than the interim order itself. The regulator added that the measures could be revisited if a legislative change affects how the 2019 Act on Related Rights is implemented, leaving open the possibility that future legal developments in Paris or Brussels could alter the terms.

A second front after Google

Today's order is not the Authority's first intervention in this exact area of French media law. In March 2024, the same regulator fined Google 250 million euros for failing to comply with commitments it had previously made regarding licensing agreements with French publishers, a dispute that likewise traced back to the 2019 transposition of the neighbouring rights directive. French Competition Authority fines Google 250 million euros over publisher licensing dispute covered how that earlier case unfolded, establishing the Authority as the primary enforcer of neighbouring rights obligations against major platforms operating in France.

The parallel was not lost on legal observers following today's decision. Thomas Höppner, a competition lawyer and partner at Geradin Partners who has represented press publishers in related-rights disputes, published a summary of the ruling on LinkedIn shortly after it was issued, citing the Authority's own conclusion that Meta's practices are likely to exacerbate the precarious situation of a large proportion of publishers and press agencies. Höppner added his own assessment of the decision's significance: "I applaud the AdLC for once more using competition law effectively to ensure a fair compensation of press publishers, first vis-a-vis Google, now Meta."

That framing points to a pattern rather than an isolated case. Geradin Partners, the firm where Höppner works, has separately represented publishers and creators in a related complaint against Google before the European Commission, which opened a formal antitrust investigation in December 2025 into whether Google used publisher and YouTube content for AI purposes without adequate compensation or viable opt-out options. European Commission opens probe into Google's AI content practices detailed how Damien Geradin, the firm's founder, and Höppner both argued that fair compensation for content producers is essential for the survival of an industry that underpins democracy and the rule of law. The Meta decision extends that same argument, now enforced through interim measures rather than an open-ended investigation.

Why the timing and mechanism matter

Interim measures carry a different weight than a standard investigation update, because French law limits their use to situations of demonstrated urgency. The Authority explicitly grounded today's order in that urgency standard, stating that it considers it necessary for the injunctions to remain in force given the potentially anti-competitive nature of the practices in question and the serious and immediate harm they cause, particularly to the press sector. That language signals the regulator's view that ordinary investigative timelines, which in competition cases routinely span years, would leave publishers financially exposed for too long if enforcement waited for a final merits decision.

The 15-day information deadline is similarly designed around urgency rather than convenience. Negotiations over neighbouring rights depend on publishers being able to independently verify how much revenue their content generates on a platform and how that content is being used. Without that data, any remuneration figure a platform proposes is effectively unverifiable. The Authority's order treats data access itself as a prerequisite for a functioning negotiation, not as a courtesy Meta can supply on its own schedule.

Two case files were opened rather than one, split between APIG, representing general news publishers, and DVP, the collective management organization for neighbouring rights. That structural detail reflects how French publishers have organized their bargaining position: rather than negotiating individually with Meta, publishers channel remuneration claims through one of these two representative bodies, each covering a different segment of the press sector. Both organizations brought parallel complaints, and the Authority resolved both through parallel decisions issued the same day, numbered 26-MC-01 and 26-MC-02 respectively.

For the marketing and advertising community, the decision underscores a dynamic that has recurred across multiple European jurisdictions over recent years: competition authorities, rather than intellectual property courts, have become the primary venue for resolving disputes over how much platforms owe publishers for reusing journalism. That venue choice has consequences. Competition remedies can include structural obligations, like the four-part order the Authority issued today, that go beyond a simple monetary payment and instead reshape how negotiations must be conducted going forward.

The Authority noted that the full text of both decisions will be published online shortly, alongside presentation materials from a press conference held in connection with the ruling. Until that fuller text is available, the public record consists of the Authority's own summary of its key findings and the four injunctions it issued today.

Timeline

  • April 17, 2019 - The European Union adopts Directive 2019/790, establishing neighbouring rights for press publishers across member states.
  • July 24, 2019 - France enacts its own Act transposing the directive, creating the domestic legal basis for neighbouring rights negotiations.
  • December 2021 - Meta signs a remuneration agreement with APIG covering neighbouring rights.
  • June 2024 - Meta signs a separate remuneration agreement with DVP.
  • 2024 - New rounds of negotiations begin between Meta and both APIG and DVP to replace the expiring agreements.
  • December 31, 2024 - Meta's remuneration agreement with DVP expires.
  • January 31, 2025 - Meta's remuneration agreement with APIG expires; publishers in both groups stop receiving payment from Meta from this point forward.
  • July 8, 2026 - The Autorité de la concurrence issues decisions 26-MC-01 and 26-MC-02, ordering Meta to resume negotiations in good faith and provide remuneration data within 15 days.

Summary

Who: The Autorité de la concurrence, France's competition regulator, issued the order against Meta Platforms following complaints from the Alliance de la Presse d'Information Générale and the Société des Droits Voisins de la Presse, two organizations representing French press publishers and news agencies.

What: The Authority ordered interim measures requiring Meta to resume negotiating in good faith over neighbouring rights remuneration, provide publishers with financial data within 15 days, avoid degrading how publisher content is displayed during negotiations, and report regularly to the regulator on compliance.

When: The decisions, numbered 26-MC-01 and 26-MC-02, were issued today, July 8, 2026, following the expiry of prior remuneration agreements between Meta and the two publisher groups on December 31, 2024, and January 31, 2025.

Where: The case falls under French competition law and applies to Meta's operations affecting press publishers and news agencies in France.

Why: The Authority found that Meta's practices likely constituted an abuse of a dominant position in personal social networking services, causing serious and immediate financial harm to publishers who had gone unpaid since their agreements lapsed, while imposing its own valuation methodology and withholding data publishers needed to assess remuneration offers.