The Competition Authority imposes precautionary measures on Meta, summoning the group to negotiate in good faith with press publishers on neighboring rights.
The Competition Authority agrees with press publishers in their standoff with Meta. Requested last year by the General Information Press Alliance (Apig) and the organization Neighboring Rights of the Press (DVP), the institution considered that the parent company of Instagram and Facebook was causing “serious harm” to the press and “reinforcing its precariousness” by not having renewed, since January 1, 2025, the neighboring rights agreements entered into with the French daily press and magazines. The discussions having reached impasses, the Authority considers that these practices are likely to constitute an abuse of a dominant position, a point which will be decided by the investigation on the merits and which could give rise to financial sanctions in the coming months.
Practices deemed unbalanced
The Competition Authority has pointed out Meta’s method in the management of neighboring rights. “Meta imposes its own method of calculating related rights, and considers that this remuneration is only due for press content shared by Facebook users. The group also refuses to communicate to publishers the information they would need for a balanced negotiation,” summarizes Thibaud Vergé, vice-president of the Authority.
The first framework agreement, which covered the period 2019-2024, also included remuneration for the Facebook News service, which has since disappeared. According to the specialized media mind Media, the latest offer presented to Apig “just exceeded 4 million euros, compared to more than 20 million in the previous contract”.
Precautionary measures imposed on Meta
Faced with the deterioration of the economic situation of the press, the Authority decided to impose precautionary measures on Meta. “The current situation is detrimental to the economic balance of the press, and therefore to freedom of information,” notes Benoît Cœuré, president of the Authority. The institution ordered Meta this Wednesday to reopen “good faith” negotiations with the publishers, by communicating to them within fifteen days the central elements for these discussions.
These elements are Meta France’s advertising turnover, the number of impressions and the volume of engagement (clicks, comments, likes, reshares, etc.) around publishers’ content, as well as the evolution of the visibility of these articles since 2019. During the discussions, which must cover a period starting January 1, 2025, Meta is prohibited from “degrading the display of press content” on its services. The parties must submit regular reports to the Authority.
A legislative framework still incomplete
Rights related to copyright were established by a 2019 European directive to oblige digital platforms to remunerate press titles for the indexing of their content. But the press is still struggling to obtain this remuneration, due to the flaws in the French transposition passed in 2019. To date, only Google and Qwant have active collective agreements in the name of this law.
To make up for these shortcomings, Parliament passed the Balanant bill, which gives Arcom the role of arbiter of negotiations. “Our decision today confirms the urgency of implementing this proposed law,” underlines Benoît Cœuré, who indicates that the Authority will support the audiovisual regulator “in order to help them increase their skills on these very technical subjects”. Questioned by Le Figaro, the American group declared “not to agree with these decisions, but we will participate constructively in this process. We remain determined to reach a fair agreement with DVP and Apig, and we hope that these decisions will now encourage publishers to participate in good faith in these discussions”.
