Denmark steps into an EU court fight over what platforms owe publishers

Denmark has taken a side in one of the quieter but more consequential legal battles over how the internet pays for journalism. The Danish government has filed a written intervention at the Court of Justice of the European Union, backing Belgium in a case brought by a group of technology companies that dispute how Belgium enforces the press publishers’ right, according to Reuters.

It is the same right at the centre of a run of recent European rulings, including the one in which Meta lost an Italian publisher-pay case at the EU’s top court.

The dispute turns on Article 15 of the 2019 Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive, the provision that gave press publishers a right to be paid when platforms reuse their content.

Belgium’s way of implementing that right is what the platforms are challenging, arguing that the national rules go beyond what EU law permits. Denmark, in intervening, is arguing the opposite.

The companies bringing the case are not minor players. Reuters reports that the challenge was filed against the Belgian government in 2023 by a group including Streamz, Google, Meta, Spotify, and Sony, which contend that Belgium’s implementation of the directive undermines rather than applies EU copyright law. The oral hearing is set for 6 and 7 July, and Denmark intends to take part rather than simply file on paper.

Copenhagen’s motive is explicitly protective. The government said it decided to intervene in favour of Belgium out of concern for the effect the case could have on Danish media houses, and to help ensure that Meta and other large platforms actually pay for newspaper articles and other content uploaded to their services. This is national industrial interest expressed through a courtroom, and Denmark is not hiding it.

That interest has a local backdrop. Danish publishers have been unusually organised in pressing platforms for payment, forming a collective management body to bargain on their behalf and, after talks stalled, taking OpenAI to court earlier this year over the use of their material. A government intervention in Luxembourg is the diplomatic layer sitting on top of that domestic push.

The stakes reach well beyond Belgium. Because the CJEU interprets EU law for all member states, a ruling on whether Belgium’s enforcement is compatible with the directive will effectively set the boundaries for how far any country can go in forcing platforms to the negotiating table. A win for the companies would narrow that room; a win for Belgium, and Denmark, would widen it.

The direction of recent case law has favoured publishers. The CJEU has already found that member states may require fair remuneration and data-sharing between platforms and press publishers, a line of reasoning that gives national regulators real leverage.

The platforms’ challenge to Belgium is, in part, an attempt to check that momentum before it hardens further, following years of friction over Google’s use of news content in Europe.

The timing also reflects a newer anxiety. The fight over snippets and search results is now entangled with AI, as the same news archives platforms display in search are the material large language models train on.

Publishers who spent years arguing about payment for links are increasingly arguing about payment for training data, and the principles tested in Luxembourg will shape both.

Denmark’s decision to appear in person, rather than lodge a document and leave it there, signals how seriously it takes the outcome. Governments intervene in EU cases fairly often, but arguing at an oral hearing puts Copenhagen visibly alongside Brussels against some of the largest technology companies in the world.

None of this will be settled at the hearing. Oral arguments are a stage in a long process, an opinion from an advocate general and a final judgment will follow months later, and the court may yet frame the question more narrowly than either side wants. What the Danish intervention marks is the moment a second government decided the fight over paying for news was important enough to join, rather than watch.