In their letter, the groups – representing publishers across Europe, Australia, and South Africa – highlight what they describe as a growing “value gap” between news publishers and online platforms. Technology giants such as Google, Microsoft and Meta, they argue, profit substantially from using publishers’ content through search engines, news aggregation and user profiling, without authorization and without providing fair compensation. This practice, they warn, is eroding publishers’ advertising revenues and jeopardizing the viability of the press – and, by extension, democracy itself.
The European Union sought to address this imbalance with the creation of the Press Publishers’ Right, designed to guarantee fair remuneration for media outlets. Greece incorporated the directive into its national legislation in 2022 and tasked the Hellenic Telecommunications and Post Commission (EETT) with establishing the rules for calculating compensation.
However, according to Greek industry groups, the EETT is considering excluding indirect revenues of major platforms from this calculation. Such an approach, the letter argues, would drastically reduce the compensation due to publishers, leaving them with only a fraction of the enormous revenues generated by tech companies. The signatories warn that this would defeat the very purpose of European and Greek law, perpetuating the value gap rather than closing it.
They also stress that excluding indirect revenues runs counter to international precedent. The French Competition Authority, in a landmark decision in March 2024, explicitly recognized that indirect revenues must be factored in. The letter cites multiple international studies that demonstrate how platform revenues – both direct and indirect – are closely tied to press content.
The organizations urge Mitsotakis to ensure that Greece’s regulatory framework delivers on its intended goal: a fair and effective system of compensation for publishers, in line with European law and global best practices. Only then, they argue, can the economic sustainability of the press be safeguarded, and with it the protection of one of democracy’s essential pillars.
The signatories include leading European and international press associations, as well as Greece’s own OSDEL.
