Denmark backed Belgium in EU court: platforms must pay publishers

Denmark in 2026 filed an official written intervention with the Court of Justice of the European Union, siding with Belgium in a case against a group of technology companies. The companies challenge the rules by which Belgium has obliged platforms to pay publishers compensation for the use of news content fragments — headlines, leads, and snippets in search results and news aggregators.

What Technology Companies Challenge

The dispute concerns the implementation of neighboring rights for publishers — a mechanism introduced by the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM Directive, 2019). Article 15 of the directive obliged member states to implement a system of mandatory payments: search engines and aggregators displaying news fragments must pay copyright holders for doing so.

• Legal basis: Article 15 of EU DSM Directive (2019)
• Claimants: a group of technology companies (specific composition not publicly disclosed)
• Denmark's position: written intervention on Belgium's side at CJEU
• Dispute subject: legality of Belgium's national implementation of the payment mechanism

Technology companies filed a lawsuit stating that Belgium exceeded the limits provided by the directive and established more burdensome conditions than Brussels requires. The court must decide: is Belgium's interpretation of the rule legitimate or does it contradict European law and require revision.

This is not the first dispute over neighboring rights mechanism in the EU. France implemented it before other member states: in 2021–2022 the French regulator obliged Google to conclude payment agreements with major publishing groups. The Belgian case touches on a more fundamental question — the legality of the national law itself, not a separate agreement.

Why Denmark's Intervention Changes the Court Balance

Written intervention is an official legal instrument of CJEU: a member state not party to a case may present to the court its position and arguments. CJEU courts take such interventions into account as evidence of broad consensus within the European Union on the disputed question.

Denmark made a conscious choice by siding with Belgium. This means the Scandinavian country supports an expanded interpretation of publishers' rights and advocates for the right of national governments to independently set parameters for mandatory payments. If other member states join the case with similar interventions, Belgium's position in court will be substantially strengthened.

AI

Context: Why the Case Extends Beyond Traditional Media Market

Publishers' neighboring rights became a key legal instrument in the growing conflict between media companies and the AI industry. The same DSM Directive articles that underlie the Belgian case are used by European publications in lawsuits against AI providers training language models on news archives without permission and without compensating copyright holders.

The CJEU ruling on the Belgian case will inevitably become a precedent in these parallel proceedings. For AI platforms indexing or aggregating news content, the verdict will establish legal frameworks: how broad financial obligations to media companies can be under European law.

What This Means

The CJEU case seems technical — a dispute over one norm in one country — but its outcome shapes the legal basis for the entire European Union. In an era when AI systems consume enormous volumes of media content, the question of publishers' right to compensation becomes one of the key issues for the future of digital journalism.