OMI on French Meta Ruling: ‘This Is About Sovereignty and Democracy as Much as Competition’
Open Markets Institute’s Center for Media and Digital Governance welcomes this week’s clear-eyed orders from the French competition authority – the Autorité de la Concurrence – which recognizes that Meta is likely abusing its dominant position in payment negotiations with French media publishers and compel it to negotiate transparently and in good faith.
French law aims to level the bargaining power between news and media publishers and the Big Tech companies that feed on their work. Meta is instead exploiting its monopoly power in negotiations by refusing to tell publishers how their content is used and the revenue it’s generating, while trying to unilaterally dictate what it is willing to pay.
“This decision is about European sovereignty and democracy as much as competition or bargaining power. American Big Tech has the power to break Europe's news industry and reshape how an entire continent gets its information – undermining the foundations of its democracy. Companies like Meta are fighting every step of the way as Europe tries to rebalance power and hold them to account, right down to the petty, bad-faith way they’ve approached these negotiations,” said Dr Courtney Radsch, Director of the Center for Media and Digital Governance. “US Big Tech continues to act as if the law here does not apply to them, and it falls to regulators to show them that it does, with real consequences when they refuse.”
France has been a leading European enforcer as US Big Tech companies continue to flout the law. It fined Google €500 million in 2021 and another €250 million in 2024 over the company's related-rights negotiations with French publishers. Meta faces separate pressure elsewhere in Europe: a Spanish court in November 2025 ordered it to pay roughly €479 million in damages to 87 news outlets over its advertising practices, a ruling Meta is appealing.
In October last year, Open Markets Institute held a two-day conference in Brussels urging firm enforcement against Big Tech to protect European sovereignty and democracy. The event included a policy brief warning of Big Tech’s lawlessness and urging clear-eyed enforcement approaches from European regulators.