On 12 May 2026, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered its judgment in Case C‑797/23, Meta Platforms Ireland v AGCOM, on the Italian implementation of Article 15 of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM) Directive and the so‑called “fair remuneration” for online uses of press publications.

In the days that followed, much commentary focused on headlines claiming that the Court had “recognised a right to fair compensation for publishers”. That narrative is only partially accurate. The judgment does not create an autonomous EU‑level right to fair remuneration, nor does it endorse an Australian‑style “must pay” regime. Rather, it performs a compatibility check: it confirms that Member States may, under certain conditions, structure their transposition of Article 15 around a mandatory negotiation framework and a right to fair remuneration, but only if they respect the freedom of contract and the freedom to conduct a business.

This post summarises the key points of the decision and explains what it means for press publishers, online platforms and regulators.

Background: Article 15 CDSM and the Italian model

Article 15 of Directive (EU) 2019/790 introduced a new neighbouring right for press publishers regarding online uses of their press publications by “information society service providers”. The provision grants publishers the exclusive rights of reproduction and making available to the public for certain uses of their content by services such as search engines and social networks, subject to some important exceptions (including for “very short extracts” and for private or non‑commercial uses).

Crucially, the directive leaves Member States a margin of discretion as to how to implement this new right and ensure it produces “effective and balanced” outcomes. Some countries opted for relatively light implementations, focusing mainly on contractual freedom and collective bargaining. Italy, by contrast, chose a more structural approach: it introduced a right to “fair remuneration” for the online use of press publications, coupled with a regulatory framework designed to make that right effective.

Under the Italian scheme, online service providers that use press publications must negotiate with publishers the amount of fair remuneration. During negotiations, they cannot reduce the visibility of the publishers’ contents, and they must provide the data necessary to assess the economic value of the use. If the parties fail to reach an agreement, the Italian Communications Authority (AGCOM) can step in and determine the remuneration, according to criteria it has adopted, and can enforce the information obligations, including through sanctions.

Meta challenged this framework before the Italian administrative courts, arguing that it violated the CDSM Directive and the freedom to conduct a business. The national court referred several questions to the CJEU on the interpretation of Article 15 and the compatibility of the Italian model with EU law.

What the Court actually decided about “fair remuneration”

The Court’s starting point is that Article 15 aims to grant press publishers exclusive rights of reproduction and making available to the public, but leaves Member States flexibility on how to ensure those rights are enforced in practice. Within this margin of discretion, Member States may provide that publishers are entitled to fair remuneration when they authorise online service providers to use their press publications.

However, the Court immediately attaches a set of conditions to this possibility. For a national right to fair remuneration to be compatible with EU law:

• the remuneration must be the economic counterpart of the authorisation granted by the publisher to the service provider to reproduce or make available the press publications online. In other words, it is consideration for a contractual licence, not a statutory levy;
• publishers must remain free to refuse to grant such authorisation, or to grant it free of charge. The national law cannot transform their neighbouring right into an obligation to license on fixed terms;
• no payment can be imposed on service providers who do not use those press publications. If a platform decides not to make use of the protected press content, it cannot be charged.

These conditions matter, because they dispel any notion that the Court is creating a “universal” right for publishers to receive money whenever their content exists online. The judgment instead endorses a contractual logic: the right to fair remuneration exists only in the context of authorisation and use, and it is governed by the freedom to choose whether to enter into such a relationship and on what terms.

This is why it is somewhat misleading to say that the Court “recognises the publishers’ right to fair remuneration” as if it were an EU‑level innovation. The directive already recognised a neighbouring right; the Italian legislator chose to link that right to an entitlement to fair remuneration in case of licensed use; and the Court confirms that this is compatible with EU law, provided the freedom to contract and the possibility of zero use remain intact.

Obligation to negotiate vs obligation to contract

A central issue in the case was whether the Italian framework, particularly the powers conferred on AGCOM, amounted to imposing an obligation to conclude a contract (and thus to pay) on platforms – a question often framed in comparison with the Australian “bargaining code” model.

The Court draws a clear distinction between an obligation to negotiate and an obligation to contract.

On the one hand, the Court holds that Member States may impose on service providers certain procedural obligations, such as:

• an obligation to enter into negotiations with publishers regarding fair remuneration, where the providers use or intend to use their press publications;
• an obligation to provide the data necessary to calculate fair remuneration, given that only providers hold granular information about revenues generated or expected from the use of press publications;
• an obligation not to reduce the visibility of publishers’ content during the negotiations, in order to avoid exerting pressure or masking the economic value of the content.

The Court considers these obligations compatible with the DSM Directive and with the freedom to conduct a business, because they are designed to correct structural imbalances in bargaining power and information asymmetries between publishers and large online platforms. They are restrictions on business freedom, but ones that can be justified by the legitimate objectives of ensuring a fair and well‑functioning market for copyright and related rights, and of safeguarding the economic sustainability and pluralism of the press.

On the other hand, the Court stresses that those obligations cannot amount to a duty to conclude a contract against a provider’s will. Member States cannot force a service provider to enter into a licence agreement or to pay fair remuneration where the provider chooses not to use the press publications in question. Nor can they deprive publishers of the freedom to grant licences free of charge, if they wish. The line that must not be crossed is precisely that between “must negotiate in good faith when you use this content” and “must accept a contract and pay, whether you like it or not”.

This distinction aligns closely with the position advanced by Advocate General Szpunar in his Opinion, and with the concerns raised in earlier doctrinal debates about the risk of importing a strong-form Australian model into the EU context. The CJEU basically confirms that EU law allows robust procedural obligations and regulatory intervention to ensure fair bargaining, but does not allow a de facto obligation to contract built into the sector‑specific copyright framework.

AGCOM’s role: regulatory arbiter, not contract enforcer

Another contentious point was whether AGCOM’s powers to set criteria for fair remuneration, to determine its amount in case of disagreement, and to impose sanctions, were compatible with EU law and with the freedom to conduct a business.

The Court’s answer is nuanced but ultimately favourable to the Italian regulator, again underlining the importance of context. It accepts that:

• a national authority like AGCOM may be entrusted with defining objective criteria for what counts as “fair remuneration” under the transposition of Article 15;
• the regulatory authority may also be empowered to determine the remuneration when the parties fail to agree, provided this is done within a framework that respects the conditions mentioned above (in particular, the absence of use means no payment, and publishers retain their freedom to license or not);
• AGCOM may enforce information obligations and certain behavioural obligations (such as the non‑reduction of visibility) and may impose sanctions for non‑compliance.

These powers are seen as necessary to give practical effect to the rights conferred on publishers by the directive and by national law. Without transparency obligations and some form of dispute resolution or determination mechanism, publishers would remain in a structurally weak negotiating position, unable to know the value of their content or to enforce their rights effectively.

At the same time, the Court emphasises that the national court remains responsible for verifying in concreto that the way AGCOM exercises its powers does not result in disproportionate restrictions on providers’ freedom to conduct a business. The judgment therefore validates the architecture in principle, but expects national courts to police proportionality in practice.

Freedom to conduct a business and proportionality

The judgment is explicit that the obligations imposed on service providers — to negotiate, to furnish data, to avoid reducing content visibility, and to comply with AGCOM’s determinations and sanctions — constitute a restriction of the freedom to conduct a business under Article 16 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. The question is whether this restriction is proportionate and justified by objectives of general interest.

Here, the Court deploys a fairly standard proportionality analysis, but with a strong emphasis on the particular dynamics of digital media markets. It notes:

• the evolution of digital technologies has profoundly changed the media sector, especially the press, leading to a significant decline in publishers’ revenues and putting their business model and democratic role under strain;
• The DSM Directive, including Article 15, seeks to respond to these developments by ensuring a fair and sustainable environment for the exploitation of copyright and related rights, and by enabling publishers to recoup their investments;
• the measures in question pursue legitimate objectives of general interest recognised by the Union, including the proper functioning and fairness of the copyright market, the protection of intellectual property, and the promotion of media freedom and pluralism.

Against this backdrop, the Court considers that imposing obligations to negotiate, to disclose relevant economic data and to refrain from retaliatory conduct is an appropriate and necessary means to achieve those objectives, given the information asymmetry and bargaining power imbalance between publishers and large platforms. As long as the “no use, no pay” principle is respected and the freedom to contract is preserved, the interference with business freedom remains proportionate.

This reasoning is likely to resonate beyond the specific context of Article 15, as it signals a general willingness to tolerate targeted regulatory interventions that rebalance bargaining power in digital markets where cultural or democratic goods are at stake.

No Australian “must pay” model, but a green light for structured bargaining

From a comparative perspective, the judgment situates the Italian model somewhere between a pure contractual freedom approach and the stronger “bargaining code” logic developed in Australia.

On the one hand, the Court clearly rejects any reading that would turn Article 15 into a vehicle for imposing payments on platforms irrespective of actual use, or into an obligation to license content on regulator‑determined terms. Those would be incompatible with the freedom to conduct a business and with the directive’s design.

On the other hand, the Court accepts that member states can go beyond a minimalist transposition and can build a structured bargaining framework, including:

• mandatory negotiations where platforms use publishers’ content;
• legally defined parameters for fair remuneration;
• asymmetric information obligations to overcome data imbalances;
• a regulatory authority empowered to set remuneration in case of disagreement and to enforce behavioural obligations.

Within these boundaries, national legislatures and regulators have significant room to experiment with mechanisms that strengthen publishers’ bargaining position and ensure that the value created by online distribution of press content is more evenly shared.

Implications for publishers, platforms and regulators

For publishers, the decision confirms that models like the Italian one are compatible with EU law and can play a meaningful role in securing remuneration for the online use of their content, without having to rely exclusively on antitrust enforcement or ad hoc negotiations. It also reinforces their leverage in bargaining with large platforms: platforms cannot simply refuse to negotiate or starve them of information, nor can they use the threat of delisting or demotion as a negotiation tactic while continuing to benefit from their content.

For platforms, the judgment clarifies both obligations and safeguards. They must accept a framework in which using press content triggers duties to negotiate in good faith, to share relevant data and to abide by a regulator’s determinations. However, they retain the strategic option to abstain from using certain content altogether, and they are protected against being forced to pay for content they do not use or to accept licences on terms they fundamentally oppose.

For regulators and policymakers, the decision offers a roadmap. It confirms that:

• Article 15 allows the design of robust enforcement and bargaining mechanisms, not just a bare right on paper;
• regulatory authorities can be given significant powers, provided these are clearly framed and proportionate;
• the fine line to respect is between facilitating and structuring negotiations, on the one hand, and compelling contracts or payments in the absence of use, on the other.

This will be relevant not only for current implementations of Article 15, but also for any future attempts to develop “bargaining code”‑style regimes in Europe, whether in the field of news, music, or other forms of cultural content.

Conclusion

Meta v AGCOM is not the birth certificate of a new EU‑level right to fair remuneration for publishers. The right already existed in national law as an implementation choice under Article 15 CDSM. What the Court does is to validate the broad outlines of the Italian model and to anchor it firmly in a contractual logic: fair remuneration as the counterpart of an authorisation to use, conditional on actual use, and framed by obligations that rebalance bargaining power while preserving the freedom to conduct a business.

In doing so, the Court sends a double message. To Member States, it offers a green light to design structured bargaining frameworks that make neighbouring rights meaningful in practice, as long as they respect “no use, no pay” and avoid imposing an obligation to contract. To platforms, it makes clear that the era of informal, opaque and unilateral arrangements for the use of press content is over, but that they remain free to choose whether and under what conditions to participate in this market.

The real story of Meta v AGCOM is thus less about a “recognition” of fair remuneration, and more about the shaping of a balanced, procedurally robust ecosystem in which press publishers’ rights are enforceable, platforms’ freedoms remain protected, and regulators have the tools to hold the ring between them.