French antitrust authority orders Meta to resume media fee payments
- France's competition regulator ordered Meta Platforms to put forward a formal payment plan within 15 days.
- The interim measures follow a complete breakdown in talks over "neighboring rights" licensing extensions.
- The watchdog ruled that Meta likely abused its dominant position by withholding critical data from publishers.
The French competition authority (Autorité de la concurrence) has ordered Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) to present a structured payment plan and immediately resume good-faith negotiations with French press associations seeking back-payments for digital content use.
The regulatory intervention follows joint anti-competitive complaints lodged by the French Society for Related Rights of the Press (DVP) and the Alliance of General News Media (APIG), which represent leading national publications like Le Monde and Les Échos.
"The negotiation is taking place under conditions where there is a refusal to consider an alternative methodology or to share the data required," stated Benoît Cœuré, president of the antitrust authority.
The emergency injunction forces the social media conglomerate to deliver the granular financial and metric reporting required for publishers to accurately calculate the economic value of their journalism across Meta's digital surfaces.
Under the binding interim mandates, Meta is strictly barred from degrading, reducing, or altering the digital display and algorithmic distribution of the affected news content while active negotiations are underway.
The dispute stems from the expiration of initial copyright licensing frameworks—which ended in late 2024 for DVP members and early 2025 for APIG—leaving French journalists entirely uncompensated for over a year despite ongoing content distribution on Facebook and Instagram.
