France is moving to turn a long-running commercial dispute into a regulated one. MLex reported on 21 October 2026 that the country is passing legislation that would let Arcom, the media regulator, settle neighbouring-rights payment disputes between news publishers and online services, framing it as an alternative to competition enforcement. The Balanant bill, named for MoDem deputy Erwan Balanant, passed the National Assembly in March 2026 and the Senate on the night of 16 to 17 June 2026. I could not verify the joint-committee date or a final vote, so the text below describes what the chambers have approved, not a promulgated law.
What the bill does
According to CB News's report on the Senate vote, platforms would have to give publishers all data on how their content is used, so that negotiations can proceed in good faith. If a platform fails that duty, Arcom gains oversight powers and can sanction it up to 1% of turnover. If the parties cannot agree on pay, Arcom can be seized and set the remuneration, either by choosing one party's proposal or by determining its own amount.
Public Sénat's account of the Senate committee stage adds detail. Platforms get 30 days to answer publishers' requests; after that Arcom can issue a formal notice and then sanction. Public Sénat reports the 1% ceiling as applying to worldwide turnover, while CB News says only 'turnover', so the enacted text must settle the base. Appeals against an Arcom-set remuneration go to the Paris Court of Appeal and do not suspend payment. The Senate's adopted text (no. 141, dated 16 June 2026) and committee report (no. 720) are on senat.fr.
The strongest case for the bill
The case for intervention is real. The 2019 EU copyright directive created the right, yet CB News notes its effectiveness remains imperfect seven years on. Publishers negotiate blind: Senate rapporteur Michel Laugier argues they lack the information needed to assess their rights. Competition enforcement has been slow and episodic. The Autorité de la concurrence fined Google EUR 250 million on 20 March 2024 for failing to honour commitments made in 2022, including negotiating in good faith with publishers on transparent criteria. The authority itself counted that as the fourth decision in the case in four years. A dispute that keeps producing sanctions is not a functioning market.
Legal ground has also firmed up. Both CB News and Public Sénat cite a May 2026 Court of Justice of the EU ruling that validated a comparable Italian regime, which senators used to justify giving Arcom more power. Press coverage of the ruling reports that it accepted obligations on platforms to open negotiations and share calculation data, subject to conditions on how remuneration is framed. I have not read the judgment itself, so those details should be checked against the text.
Where the design is weaker
Two features deserve scepticism, and they are not equally problematic.
The data-transparency duty is the proportionate core. Information asymmetry is a genuine market failure, a disclosure duty with a 30-day clock is cheap to comply with, and it leaves the price to the parties. If the bill stopped there, it would sit comfortably within a pro-innovation approach: fix the information gap and let bargaining work.
The price-setting power is different. Letting a regulator fix remuneration, with fines of up to 1% of turnover for non-compliance, and with appeals that do not suspend payment, shifts the burden decisively onto the platform. Choosing between the parties' offers resembles 'baseball' arbitration, which tends to discipline extreme demands. But the bill also allows Arcom to determine its own amount, which removes that discipline. The reporting I reviewed describes no stated formula, and the quality of the outcome will depend on how Arcom defines value.
That valuation question is hard. A platform's use of snippets, links or AI-generated summaries may send traffic that publishers value, or it may not. A regime that prices exposure without netting out referral value risks a levy on linking itself. The Italian precedent, as reported, suggests platforms cannot be made to pay for publishers whose content they do not use, which is a sensible limit. France should write that limit into Arcom's methodology, not leave it to guidance.
Speech and innovation consequences
For an open internet, the worst outcome is a payment system that makes news cheaper to ignore than to carry. If obligations attach to services that surface press content, some will respond by surfacing less. Smaller publishers and non-incumbent platforms would bear this hardest, since a large platform can absorb a 1% exposure and a legal team, and a startup aggregator cannot. The same logic applies to new AI products, which would be pulled into the data-sharing duty the moment they use press material.
MLex's framing, that this offers an alternative to competition enforcement, cuts both ways. A sectoral regulator with a fixed mandate is faster than an antitrust case. But competition law asks whether conduct harms the market; a price-setting regulator asks only whether the platform paid enough. The first has an evidentiary discipline the second lacks.
What to watch
Public Sénat reported that the text still faced European Commission review, and that a joint committee was not expected before October. Three safeguards would make the regime defensible:
- Publish Arcom's valuation methodology before the first determination, including treatment of referral traffic.
- Keep the choose-one-offer mechanism as the default and require reasoned justification for any independent figure.
- Review the regime after 24 months, with data on how many deals were struck without Arcom.
The bill fixes a real information problem. Whether it fixes the price problem, or merely moves it from a competition case to a regulator's desk, depends on choices still to be made.