BERLIN — Europe’s press barons thought they’d scored a major victory last fall when the European Commission threw its weight behind their idea to create a special protection for digital journalism, the linchpin of their strategy for long-term survival. But now the plan threatens to come undone.

Advocates of the reform say it would force the globe-spanning fat cats of the internet — platforms like Google, Facebook and LinkedIn, which use outside news content to attract eyeballs without paying a single cent — to compensate Europe’s publishers for use of their content. Much as radio stations pay fees to music publishers to play their songs, the companies would compensate news outlets for carrying their content.

If the reform goes through, the victory would reverberate around the world, with publishers in other regions likely to demand similar treatment. Less than six months after the Commission unveiled its proposal, however, the prospects for a so-called publisher’s right are murkier than ever amid growing doubts the plan can win enough support in the European Parliament.

“Other stakeholders are challenging the provision … questioning not only whether this is the best way of addressing concerns of press publishers vis-a-vis digital technologies, but also questioning whether the Commission proposal is adequately restricted to such concerns,” Therese Comodini Cachia, the Maltese rapporteur shepherding the proposal through Parliament, told POLITICO.

Translation: Opponents of the plan, including some small web publishers, worry it could choke traffic to their sites by creating a thicket of regulations that will dissuade Google and other platforms from driving users to them. These critics also argue that a publisher’s right will create a “link tax” (a phrase that supporters liken to a slur) but won’t achieve its backers’ main aim: to save the news sector’s broken business model.

Mounting opposition

It’s too early to say whether the proposal will founder, but it’s at a critical stage. In recent days, a number of European countries have expressed doubts about the plan, according to senior officials involved in the talks.

Dutch diplomats are among the most skeptical, people close to the negotiations say. British and Estonian diplomats have also voiced reservations.

Comodini Cachia will present a report next month, including suggested amendments to the proposal, but it’s unclear whether the hard protections demanded by the publishers will survive.

The center-right European People’s Party, the largest group in Parliament, broadly supports the initiative, while around half of the Socialists & Democrats back the plan. But that may not be enough. So far, France, Italy and Spain are the only countries openly supporting it.

Even before the ink had dried on the Commission’s proposal, an unlikely coalition of internet activists and Silicon Valley lobbyists mobilized to attack it.

The plan’s loudest critic has been Green MEP Julia Reda. Originally elected as a member of the Pirate party, Reda’s encyclopedic knowledge of copyright has made her a respected adversary for the publishers. She’s shown a particular knack for condensing the legalese of copyright reform into alarmist soundbites. She has argued, for example, that the Commission proposal could affect how articles are shared on Twitter, something both the Commission and the publishers deny.

“The problems of the newspaper industry are not copyright,” said Reda.

Old media vs new

The publishers, who have been lobbying for the reform for years, see the not-so-hidden hand of Google in the attempts to undermine their effort.

The Commission’s proposal “would hurt anyone who writes, reads or shares the news — including the many European startups working with the news sector to build sustainable business models online,” Google said in a statement.

But the publishers argue the search giant, through Google News, is the main beneficiary of their online content, because news is one of the main things people search for online.

Google downplays the benefits it derives from such content, noting that it doesn’t sell advertising alongside news. What’s more, publishers profit from traffic Google sends to their sites, the company argues. Trouble is, less than half of online readers click on the link that would take them to the publishers’ websites. Most online users read only the headlines and short article summary, or “snippet,” on sites like Google, according to EU data. That means the publishers get no traffic and thus no advertising revenue from those readers.

What worries smaller news websites and blogs that rely on traffic from news aggregators and search engines is that Google and its peers could simply refuse to pay and stop carrying news. That’s what happened in Spain when the government passed a similar law a few years ago. Google shut down Google News there in response. That hasn’t been such a problem for large newspaper and magazine publishers because readers simply go directly to their websites. But critics say that for smaller, less-known brands, it’s been more of a challenge.

Germany passed a similar, albeit weaker, law a few years ago. Google rendered the legislation all but meaningless, however, by only carrying the news of those publishers who agreed to be featured on its site for free. Those who initially refused suffered steep declines in traffic and subsequently relented. The issue is now tied up in the German courts, where a consortium of publishers is suing Google.

That’s one reason why the publishers are seeking a tough European law. Only then, they believe, will they have enough leverage to force Google’s hand.

News purveyors cast their struggle in stark terms. If what industry executives refer to as the “expropriation” of their content doesn’t end, Europe’s press will wither and die, the publishers say. In other words, it’s not just their financial well-being that’s at stake, but the survival of democracy itself.

Part of the problem is that for years publishers have been giving away for free the content they now are trying to protect.

“The reform of European copyright law is the basis for everything,” Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer and president of the German newspaper publishers’ association, said in a recent speech. “If the protection of intellectual property is not ensured, then publishers have no perspective in the digital future. And anyone who says otherwise and casually calls on publishers to be more creative and to develop new business models is either lying or distracting.”

Money troubles

Though a publisher’s right is supported by a broad coalition of European newspaper and magazine publishers, Springer, which owns the Continent’s largest daily, Bild, and is also co-owner of POLITICO in Europe, has been among the most vocal advocates for the reform, together with Spanish publishers, such as Vocento, the newspaper group. Even as the companies invest more and more in digital ventures, sustained declines in their legacy print businesses are hitting them hard.

In the four years from 2010 to 2014 alone, print revenues at Europe’s newspapers and magazines declined by €14 billion, according to a recent study by accounting giant PwC. Digital revenue during that period only rose by €4 billion, leaving a €10 billion hole in the industry’s balance sheet. The gap is expected to widen in the coming years.

Part of the problem is that for years publishers have been giving away for free the content they now are trying to protect. They bet, wrongly as it turned out, that they could parley a large online audience into lucrative ad revenue.

After conditioning readers not to pay for online content, the publishers have faced difficulty implementing subscription models. The U.K. tabloid Sun, for example, introduced a paywall in 2013 only to abandon the idea a couple of years later.

The blurry economics of online news has complicated the publishers’ case. There are no reliable figures for how much revenue the Commission’s proposal would provide publishers. In Germany, publishers estimate their online revenue would jump 10 percent, according to the Commission.

While that’s not insignificant, critics of the plan point out it’s unlikely to be enough to rescue the industry.

For decades, the publishers’ business model relied on pooling information into one source. Newspapers were a one-stop shop, not only for current affairs and analysis, but for movie listings and classified ads for property, autos and jobs. With the emergence of online competition such as eBay and Google, the publishers have lost much of that business.

That’s why opponents of the publisher’s right, including a number of MEPs, argue these underlying challenges to the industry’s business model have nothing to do with copyright.

The publishers counter that it’s not up to Parliament to analyze the merits of their commercial strategy. What’s at issue is a basic question of ownership, and the publishers say it is incumbent on legislators to protect their rights. In the pre-digital age, such protections weren’t necessary because news content didn’t fall victim to large-scale piracy. The internet, the publishers argue, has changed that because articles can be disseminated far and wide with a few clicks.

“I want journalists, publishers and authors to be paid fairly for their work, whether it is made in studios or living rooms, whether it is disseminated offline or online” — Jean-Claude Juncker, during his State of the Union speech in September

On its face, the issue is simple: The works of filmmakers, musicians and book publishers are all protected by copyrights that prohibit their distribution without a license on- or offline. For decades, radio stations have paid royalties every time they play a song, whether it’s Elvis or Beyoncé. Why then, shouldn’t journalistic works be afforded the same protections?

A short-term windfall may not be the point. The publishers’ primary aim appears to be to enshrine the basic principle that they own and control their online content into European law. Given the pace of technological innovation, that could prove crucial in the future.

Powerful allies

As publishers confront the strategic challenges of the digital age, they’ve also turned to some of their oldest allies for help — politicians.

For all the business challenges they face, newspaper and magazine publishers remain a potent political force in most countries.

In Germany, for example, Springer, which publishes both Bild and the daily Die Welt, plays a central role in influencing public opinion. The publisher has cultivated relationships with Germany’s political class for decades and enjoys especially strong ties to Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats.

Friede Springer, the German publisher’s dominant shareholder, has a close personal relationship with Merkel, for example. Indeed, it was Merkel ally Günther Oettinger, until recently digital commissioner, who helped spearhead the Commission’s latest copyright push.

Other influential publishers, including Sweden’s Bonnier and Spain’s PRISA, which publishes El País, are also pushing the Commission’s proposal. In Spain, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy was an early and vociferous backer of the idea.

The previous Commission under President José Manuel Barroso, had been lukewarm to it. That changed, however, under Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, a conservative like Merkel and Oettinger who also benefited from Springer’s support in the German press.

The publishers’ seductive logic convinced the Juncker Commission to take action. More and more countries, including Austria and Poland, were considering implementing national laws to deal with the issue. The Commission was persuaded that would only create further confusion and that it made sense to have a common European approach, similar to what it has tried to achieve with data protection. Last September, the Commission proposed a directive it said would improve “the position of rightholders to negotiate and be remunerated for the exploitation of their content by online services.”

The Commission claimed noble purpose, saying nothing less than the “sustainability of the press publications sector” and by extension “citizens’ access to information” were at stake.

Juncker made the reform top priority. Over the summer, members of his cabinet met once a week with Commission Vice President Andrus Ansip and Oettinger to iron out the details of the copyright strategy. It was referred to as the “copyright club.” Such a high-level gathering on the minutiae of a proposal was unusual, underscoring its importance to Juncker.

“I want journalists, publishers and authors to be paid fairly for their work, whether it is made in studios or living rooms, whether it is disseminated offline or online, whether it is published via a copying machine or commercially hyperlinked on the web,” Juncker said during his State of the Union speech in September.

Brexit uncertainty

One problem, though, is that the publishing industry hasn’t always spoken with one voice. Part of the difficulty is ideological. Publishers that have competed for decades across the political divide in countries like Spain and the U.K. found it difficult to join hands with their rivals. In Britain, for example, the Guardian was reluctant to be seen cooperating with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

Brexit poses another challenge. With the U.K., home to some of Europe’s most influential publications, on its way out of the EU, publishers there are losing interest in the proposed directive, diplomats say.

About the only thing that’s clear at this stage is that the plan’s fate will be determined in the coming months. By summer, Comodini Cachia, the rapporteur, will have added Parliament’s amendments to the legislation and there will be a crucial committee vote. If it passes, the broader Parliament will then decide whether to make it law.

Despite the skepticism, the publishing lobby remains sanguine, confident that its deep political connections will ultimately see the legislation through.

“The news media sector is optimistic that policymakers agree on the need for a publishers’ right,” said Wout van Wijk, executive director of News Media Europe, a lobbyist for press publishers. “Such a right will create the legal certainty needed for further investments and innovation to guarantee a free and pluralistic media landscape in Europe.”

Joanna Plucinska contributed to this article.

This article was updated to add hyperlinks.

This article is part of a series on Digital Rules. To view POLITICO's Copyright Power Matrix click on the image below.

