Meta today lost two appeals before the Paris Court of Appeal against interim measures that France's Autorité de la concurrence imposed in July, leaving in place orders that require the company to negotiate in good faith with French press publishers and news agencies over neighbouring rights, hand over information on the revenue of its social networks and on how press content is used, and refrain from degrading the display of that content. According to the court's press release, Meta's practices for determining the amounts due to press publishers "appear capable of constituting an abuse of a dominant position prohibited by European and French competition law."

In Short

A Paris court today refused to cancel French orders that force Meta to negotiate payments with news publishers, share revenue and usage figures with them, and keep showing their content normally. It matters for hundreds of French newspapers and news agencies that have received nothing from Meta since their deals ran out in early 2025, and for any platform that sets its own price for news. The court said a fair price must reflect how much news is used and how much money it makes for the platform, and that the platform has to show those numbers.

What the court decided

The two judgments, registered as RG No 26/12580 and RG No 26/12581, were handed down by the court's Economic and Financial Regulation Chamber (5-7). The cases are titled Meta v Alliance de la presse d'information générale and Société des droits voisins de la presse. The Alliance, known as APIG, represents more than 300 member newspapers, according to the Autorité's July decision. DVP is a collective management organisation which, according to Presse Agence, represents 920 publications and more than 60 news agencies.

The rulings are not a final finding that Meta broke the law. They concern interim measures, which the Autorité adopted while it continues to examine the complaints on their merits. Still, the court's reasoning goes well beyond procedure. Its press release sets out five steps.

First, the court rejected the argument that a dispute rooted in copyright law sits outside competition law. "The Court of Appeal held that the fact that the practices complained of relate to the Neighbouring Rights Law, adopted to transpose Directive 2019/790, does not preclude the application of competition law," the press release says.

Second, it endorsed the Autorité's choice of market. The court examined the business model of personal social networking services, "which relies on attracting users by means of published content," and observed that "both the advertising monetisation of personal social networking services and the remuneration for the use of press content on those networks are firmly tied to the market for those services." Meta's practices on neighbouring rights, it concluded, had to be assessed on the market for the same services in which the press content is distributed.

Third, it defined what a fair price means. Drawing on the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union and on the directive's objectives, the court held "that remuneration for the use of press content on personal social networks is fair, within the meaning of Article 102(a) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, only if it is determined, in particular, by reference to the nature and extent of the use of that content and the economic value generated by that use, which it is for network service providers to substantiate."

Fourth, it applied that standard to Meta. "Meta was likely to have taken only partial account of the nature and extent of the use of the content and of the economic value generated by that use," the press release says. "It added that the transparency conditions required to determine a fair price did not appear to be met." The court concluded that the conduct "was capable of constituting a practice of imposing unfair trading conditions."

Fifth, it accepted the urgency. The court held that "this conduct is the cause of serious and immediate harm to the press sector and to the members of APIG and DVP, distinct from the structural economic difficulties facing that sector." Assessing proportionality, it found the measures "strictly limited to what is necessary to deal with the urgency."

Who has to prove the value

The last clause of the fairness test carries the most weight. Under the court's reading, the economic value generated by press content on a social network is something the platform has "to substantiate." Publishers cannot see how often their articles are viewed inside Facebook, how long users spend with them, or what share of advertising revenue they help produce. The platform can. Placing the burden on the party that holds the data changes the starting point of every negotiation that follows.

The court did not set a price, and nothing in its press release gives a figure for what Meta should pay. The quoted passages come from an unofficial English translation of the press release circulated by Thomas Höppner, a competition lawyer, with his LinkedIn post; the translation does not name its translator.

The orders Meta must keep following

The Autorité adopted its two decisions on July 8, 2026, numbered 26-MC-01 for APIG and 26-MC-02 for DVP. According to the court's press release, the measures order Meta to:

  • negotiate in good faith the remuneration due for the reuse of protected content "across all of its services," following the arrangements of the Neighbouring Rights Law and on "transparent, objective and non-discriminatory criteria";
  • provide the complainants with certain information on the revenue of its various social networks and on the use of protected content;
  • not degrade the way in which press content is displayed.

When the decisions came out, PPC Land reported that the Autorité gave Meta 15 days to hand over the information needed for negotiations, required the negotiations to cover reuse from the start of 2025, and asked for regular compliance reports. The measures stay in force until the Autorité rules on the merits.

The phrase "across all of its services" matters because scope was one of the three points on which talks broke down. According to the court's press release, the round of negotiations that began in 2024 ended with "no agreement reached on the amount of remuneration due, the scope of the uses covered by neighbouring rights, or the Meta services concerned."

How the dispute reached the court

The legal basis is Law No 2019-775 of July 24, 2019, which transposed EU Directive 2019/790 of April 17, 2019 and created a neighbouring right for news agencies and press publishers. Under that law, any reproduction or communication to the public of press publications in digital form by an online public communication service needs the publisher's authorisation. Remuneration is based on revenue from the exploitation of those publications, "direct or indirect," and is set with regard to factors such as publishers' human, material and financial investment, the contribution of press publications to political and general information, and the extent of their use by online services. The law also requires those services to give publishers all information on how users engage with press publications, plus whatever else is needed for "a transparent assessment of the remuneration and its distribution."

Meta did sign deals. Its framework agreement with APIG was concluded on December 24, 2021, according to the Autorité's decision. A deal with DVP followed in June 2024. DVP's agreement expired on December 31, 2024 and APIG's on January 31, 2025. "Since the first agreements expired, the members of APIG and DVP have no longer received any remuneration from Meta in respect of neighbouring rights," the court's press release says.

DVP took the matter to the Autorité in July 2025 and APIG in September 2025, both asking for interim measures. The Autorité found that Meta likely held a dominant position on the European market for personal social networking services, and that two practices - imposing unfair trading conditions and circumventing the Neighbouring Rights Law - could constitute abuses under Article 102 TFEU and Article L. 420-2 of the French Commercial Code.

Meta filed its appeals on August 6, 2026, seeking annulment or, in the alternative, variation of the decisions. In a post dated September 16, 2026, Meta said the court would hear the appeals the following day. The judgments came six weeks after that hearing.

Inside Meta's valuation method

The Autorité's public decision on the APIG complaint, which contains redactions, describes how Meta built its offers. The detail explains why the court focused on "the nature and extent of the use" of content.

For its first offer, Meta used an A/B test. According to the decision, Meta temporarily replaced enriched links on Facebook with plain hyperlinks for about two weeks in the second half of 2024. It then estimated the value of news links posted by users from two indicators, views per visit and outbound clicks, and applied a share percentage, a multiplier labelled a "good faith adjustment" for 2025 to 2027, and a premium for certified general information publications. A second offer changed the multiplier for 2025 and 2026, added a premium for publishers' human, material and financial investment, and deducted value for news agencies' business-to-business content.

The third and fourth offers took a different route. They used as their reference the amount of the first licence for "existing services" under the 2021 framework agreement. The Autorité noted that Meta did not justify choosing that relatively old reference point, which ignored later developments. The current offer to APIG, according to the decision, is a flat annual amount for 2025 and 2026 based on that same licence. The figure is redacted.

Meta's position on scope was narrow. According to the decision, Meta told APIG at the start of the second negotiation period that remuneration applies only to enriched news links published by third-party users on Facebook. It also cited clause 3.3.2 of its terms of service, under which publishers grant Meta a licence when they enable sharing or post their own content directly.

The information gap was wide. According to the decision, APIG did not receive the concrete elements of the A/B study, such as the sample composition, the underlying data or the reasons for the chosen indicators. It waited more than nine months for essential information. Revenue for Facebook, Instagram and Threads in France for 2024 arrived on September 11, 2025, and only as ranges. Data on impressions, click-through rates and time spent on protected content had still not been provided by the date of the Autorité's hearing.

The decision also puts Meta's scale on the record. Meta's worldwide revenue has risen 183% since 2019, the year the neighbouring rights law was passed. In April 2026, according to Médiamétrie data cited by the Autorité, Meta was the second most visited platform in France, with 54.7 million monthly unique visitors. Meta's share of the market for social networks, including hybrid platforms, in the European Economic Area was between 65% and 75% throughout 2022 to 2024.

Meta's position

Meta has disputed the case from the start. In the September 16 post, Tim Lamb, Meta's vice president and head of competition and regulatory, described the Autorité's findings as wrong on the facts and the law. According to the post, Meta negotiated in good faith, had already signed agreements with both groups, and offered extensions well before the earlier deals expired so that payments would not stop during new talks; both groups refused. Meta also said it proposed short-term agreements to keep money flowing, shared data and detailed information proactively, and made a series of offers that exceeded the proportional value of the earlier agreements for the same rights. It argued that any damage stemmed from the publishers' own decisions, and called the legal framework fundamentally uncertain. The post gave no payment figures.

After today's rulings, a Meta spokesperson said the company was disappointed, according to Reuters. Meta is assessing next steps, will continue to comply with the interim measures and will keep negotiating in good faith, the spokesperson said, adding that the company hoped publishers would do the same. Meta has not said whether it will pursue a further appeal.

DVP welcomed the decision. According to Presse Agence, DVP board president Jean-Marie Cavada said the organisation would keep defending its members' interests before the Autorité and in negotiations with Meta. Managing director Mélanie Loubersac described the ruling as essential to making neighbouring rights effective, saying the rights cannot remain theoretical. DVP called on Meta to apply its obligations in full.

Höppner, a partner at Geradin Partners according to his LinkedIn profile, posted within hours of the judgments. "I welcome today's groundbreaking judgments by the Paris Court of Appeal dismissing Meta's appeal against the interim measures decisions adopted by the Autorité de la concurrence," he wrote. He framed the ruling as a matter of bargaining power: "By refusing to let dominant platforms increase and exploit the information asymmetry between themselves and their dependent business users, the Paris Court strengthens those users' bargaining power. That is an important development for Article 102 (a) TFEU in general, and licensing negotiations in particular, even at this interim stage."

His post does not say whether he or his firm acts for any party in the French case. Geradin Partners represents the European Publishers Council and Corint Media in their complaint against Google, which led the European Commission to open formal proceedings on December 9, 2025 into Google's use of publisher content in AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Höppner also linked the French ruling to Poland. On October 5, according to Reuters, Poland's competition authority UOKiK said it suspected Google of abusing its dominant position in negotiating content payments with Polish publishers. The concerns cover how Google sets payment for articles and snippets shown in search results, Google News and Discover, and UOKiK said Google did not give publishers the data they needed to evaluate offers. The potential fine is up to 10% of turnover. Google Poland said it was reviewing the decision and pointed to licensing deals with more than 70 Polish publications. The parallel is the information gap: in both countries, the authority's concern includes publishers lacking the data needed to judge what they are offered.

Why the ruling matters beyond France

The dispute sits inside a pattern PPC Land has followed for months. Regulators and courts keep returning to one question: who controls the numbers that decide what content is worth?

On May 12, 2026, the Court of Justice of the European Union, sitting as a 13-judge Grand Chamber in case C-797/23, upheld Italy's rules on fair remuneration for press publishers against a challenge from Meta. That judgment observed that only the platforms hold the information needed to assess the economic value of online use, which leaves publishers in a weaker negotiating position. The Paris court's fairness test, which cites CJEU case law, puts that observation to work under Article 102.

France has also been here before with Google. On March 20, 2024, the Autorité fined Google 250 million euros for failing to respect commitments on licensing agreements with French publishers. On August 11, 2026, APIG filed a new referral against Google over AI Overviews and AI Mode, arguing that the features launched in France without prior authorisation or dedicated remuneration.

And Meta faces a separate, parallel fight with publishers over its new commercial terms, which would let it crawl business websites. Meta moved their effective date to November 20 after publisher complaints. On October 23, the European Publishers Council asked the European Commission to halt the terms before that date. On October 28, the Oslo District Court temporarily blocked the terms after 10 Norwegian media groups applied for an emergency order. The French case concerns payment for content already distributed on Meta's platforms rather than crawling, but the legal tool is the same in both: interim relief on the basis of a likely abuse of dominance. The Commission used that tool against Meta itself on June 9, 2026, when it ordered Meta to restore access to WhatsApp's business API for rival AI assistants.

For the marketing industry, the significance lies in which data is now at stake. The metrics named in the Autorité's decision - impressions, click-through rates, time spent, revenue by platform in a given country - are the same measures advertisers buy against. The court tied the advertising monetisation of social networks directly to the press content those networks carry. Under the interim orders, Meta must give the complainants information on platform revenue and content use, data the Autorité found had arrived late, only in ranges, or not at all.

The ruling also bears on any platform whose negotiating position rests on its own valuation model. Meta's first offer relied on an internal test whose sample and data were not shared with APIG. The court did not rule on that test as such, but its finding that the transparency conditions for a fair price "did not appear to be met" applies to exactly this kind of figure: one the other side cannot check.

What remains open

Several questions are unanswered. The Autorité has not yet ruled on the merits, and no date for that decision has been published. Meta has not said whether it will take the case further. The amounts in the old agreements and in Meta's current offer are redacted in the public decision, so the gap between the two sides cannot be measured from public sources. Meta says it is complying with the interim measures, while DVP has called on it to apply them in full; neither has detailed what information has changed hands since July.

What is settled, for now, is the framework. Until the Autorité decides otherwise, Meta must negotiate across all of its services, share revenue and usage information, and keep press content displayed as before.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Meta Platforms Inc. and Meta Platforms Ireland Limited, the Alliance de la presse d'information générale (APIG), the Société des droits voisins de la presse (DVP), France's Autorité de la concurrence and the Paris Court of Appeal. Competition lawyer Thomas Höppner of Geradin Partners commented on the ruling.

What: The Paris Court of Appeal dismissed Meta's appeals against interim measures ordering it to negotiate neighbouring rights remuneration in good faith across all its services, share revenue and usage information, and not degrade the display of press content. The court held that fair remuneration under Article 102(a) TFEU must reflect the nature and extent of use and the economic value generated, which platforms must substantiate, and found Meta likely took only partial account of both.

When: The judgments were handed down today, October 29, 2026. The Autorité imposed the measures on July 8, 2026, and Meta appealed on August 6, 2026.

Where: Paris, France, in the court's Economic and Financial Regulation Chamber, in cases RG No 26/12580 and No 26/12581. The Autorité defined the relevant market as personal social networking services at European level.

Why: Meta's agreements with DVP and APIG expired on December 31, 2024 and January 31, 2025, and members have received no neighbouring rights remuneration since. The ruling keeps the orders in force until the Autorité decides on the merits, and it sets a test for valuing press content that places the burden of proof on the platform holding the data.