Denmark backs Belgium at the EU Court of Justice: platforms must pay publishers

In 2026, Denmark 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 are challenging rules under which Belgium requires platforms to pay publishers for using fragments of news content: headlines, ledes and snippets in search results and news aggregators.

What exactly the tech companies are challenging

The dispute concerns the implementation of neighbouring 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 required member states to set up a system of mandatory payments: search engines and aggregators that display fragments of news material must pay rightsholders for doing so.

• Legal basis: Article 15 of the EU DSM Directive (2019)
• Plaintiffs: a group of technology companies (the exact makeup has not been made public)
• Denmark's position: a written intervention in support of Belgium at the CJEU
• Subject of the dispute: the legality of Belgium's national implementation of the payment mechanism

The technology companies sued, arguing that Belgium went beyond what the directive provides and imposed more burdensome conditions than Brussels requires. The court must decide whether the Belgian interpretation of the provision is lawful, or whether it conflicts with European law and must be revised.

This is not the first dispute over the neighbouring-rights mechanism in the EU. France applied it earlier than other member states: in 2021–2022, the French regulator forced Google to conclude payment agreements with major publishing groups. The Belgian case raises a more fundamental question: the lawfulness of the national law itself, rather than of an individual agreement.

Why Denmark's intervention changes the picture in court

A written intervention is an official legal instrument of the CJEU: a member state that is not a party to the case may set out its position and arguments to the court. CJEU courts take such interventions into account as evidence of broad consensus within the European Union on a contested issue.

Denmark made a deliberate choice in siding with Belgium. It signals that the Nordic country supports a broader reading of publishers' rights and backs the right of national governments to set the parameters of mandatory payments themselves. If other member states join the case with similar interventions, Belgium's position in court would be considerably strengthened.

The AI context: why the case goes beyond the traditional media market

Publishers' neighbouring rights have become a key legal tool in the escalating conflict between media companies and the AI industry. European publishers use the same DSM Directive articles that underpin the Belgian case in lawsuits against AI providers that train language models on news archives without permission and without compensating rightsholders.

The CJEU ruling in the Belgian case will inevitably become a precedent in these parallel proceedings. For AI platforms that index or aggregate news content, the verdict will set the legal framework: how broad financial obligations to media companies can be under European law.

What this means

The CJEU case looks technical, a dispute over a single provision in a single country, but its outcome shapes the legal basis for the entire European Union. In an era when AI systems consume vast volumes of media content, the question of publishers' right to remuneration is becoming one of the key issues for the future of digital journalism.