Press releases
At the Council of Ministers of Culture taking place on 21 November 2019, the French Minster discussed the implementation in France of the neighbouring right for press publishers as introduced by the Copyright Directive 2019/790.
Franck Riester, French Minister of Culture, stressed that this situation reveals clear market imbalances and called upon a firm and appropriate response at EU level as well as for specific regulation for “structural platforms”.
EMMA and ENPA welcome the support expressed by ministers from several European Member States, including Romania, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Greece, Italy, Czech Republic and Portugal at the Council meeting.
The transposition of the new right in France led to Google’s immediate reaction to unilaterally change their settings and to their refusal to negotiate licence agreements with publishers for the use of their content. In practice, Google leaves publishers across Europe which are referenced in their French services with the choice to either waive their right and to release their content without compensation or to be penalised in the search results.
In this context, EMMA-ENPA’s members or l’Alliance de la Presse d’Information Générale (APIG) as well as the Syndicat des Editeurs de la Presse Magazine (SEPM) lodged two complaints for abuse of dominant position to the French competition authority in support of its preliminary enquiry launched on 2 October.
EMMA-ENPA show solidarity with the publishers in France and have been advocating for the EU to take a proactive role in order put an end to the competitive imbalances suffered by press publishers across Europe in front of dominant platforms.
After the Council meeting, EMMA-ENPA hosted an informal exchange between Ministers and publishers in order to express their opposition to the reaction of those dominant platforms as regards the application of the law in France, as well as to share concrete ideas on how to curtail the power of market dominant platforms and enable fair competition (see list of demands here).
The European Magazine Media Association, is the unique and complete representation of Europe’s magazine media, which is today enjoyed by millions of consumers on various platforms, encompassing both paper and digital formats.
The European Newspaper Publishers’ Association (ENPA) is the largest representative body of newspaper publishers across Europe. ENPA advocates for 14 national associations across 14 European countries, and is a principal interlocutor to the EU institutions and a key driver of media policy debates in the European Union.
