Press Publishers Slam EU Digital Omnibus Council Deal That Threatens Funding of Journalism and Citizens’ Access to News
The European Publishers Council (EPC) warns that the Digital Omnibus negotiating position agreed by Member States today could have disastrous consequences for European journalism if adopted into law, cutting the revenues that fund reporting, pushing more quality news behind paywalls and leaving readers with fewer independent sources of information.
The agreement gives the Council Presidency a mandate to negotiate with the European Parliament.
Angela Mills Wade, Executive Director of the European Publishers Council, said: The Council’s position represents a missed opportunity to turn Europe’s stated support for journalism and media pluralism into measures that strengthen their financial foundations. Negotiations now offer Parliament and Council the chance to deliver rules that help, rather than hinder, the financing of independent journalism.”
“Readers will pay the price if Europe makes journalism harder to fund: more paywalls, less reporting and fewer independent voices. Restricting publishers’ ability to finance their work does not remove the cost of producing it. Publishers cannot be expected to absorb lost advertising revenues while continuing to provide the same journalism free of charge.”
EPC recognises the efforts of Member States to mitigate the impact on the media sector. We welcome the supportive language in the recitals and the deletion of the Commission’s proposal to centralise users’ preferences at browser level. That proposal would have given browser providers greater control over publishers’ relationships with their readers.
But these improvements do not resolve the fundamental threat. Supportive recitals cannot compensate for binding provisions that undermine journalism’s funding. Nor does the proposed exception for contextual advertising provide a meaningful answer to publishers’ concerns. EPC considers that its benefits will flow disproportionately to large platforms, reinforcing their existing advantages in advertising rather than strengthening European media.
The text also exposes a stark imbalance in Europe’s approach to personal data. It expressly recognises legitimate interests as a basis for processing personal data to develop and operate AI, while retaining restrictive rules that constrain publishers’ use of first-party data to fund journalism. AI development can involve processing personal information at a scale and across contexts far beyond a publisher’s relationship with its readers, including information about people who have never knowingly used the AI service and may have little visibility of how their data is being used. Readers, by contrast, actively choose to visit a publisher’s website. The proposal explicitly accommodates AI development without providing comparable, proportionate flexibility for the direct relationships that sustain European journalism.
Publishers are not asking to weaken readers’ privacy or their own responsibility to protect it. Trust is fundamental to journalism and to publishers’ relationships with their audiences. We are asking for rules that reflect the purpose, scale and risks of processing, recognise those direct relationships and allow responsible use of first-party data with clear safeguards and meaningful user control. Europe must not facilitate the processing of personal data to build AI systems while making it harder to finance the journalism those systems draw upon.
Angela Mills Wade added: “The stakes are particularly high as dominant platforms and AI services increasingly answer users’ questions with synthetic summaries, reducing visits to the publishers whose reporting makes those answers possible. Further weakening publishers’ ability to finance their work risks accelerating that dependency and reducing the independent sources of information available to Europeans.”
EPC is calling on the European Parliament and the Council to improve the text so that it supports independent journalism and protects its funding. Negotiations must deliver workable consent rules and proportionate flexibility for publishers to use first-party data, respect readers’ choices and develop sustainable advertising and subscription offers.
This is about whether Europeans can continue to access a broad range of independent journalism, whatever their ability to pay. Europe’s commitment to media pluralism must be reflected in the laws that shape journalism’s ability to survive. The Digital Omnibus should be an opportunity to strengthen that ability. Legislators must not allow it to become another obstacle.
