Polish regulator delays Google news fee ruling to December

Poland’s Office of Electronic Communications, known as UKE, is the state body that watches over communications. It was meant to decide how much Google should pay Polish press publishers for using their articles in search results. It has now given itself more time. The new deadline is 26 December 2026. UKE said the case is complicated. It needs more explanations from both sides and a full look at the evidence. The statement came out on 31 August. Wirtualne Media and the Polish Chamber of Press Publishers reported it.

The case started with Repropol. That is a body that collects fees on behalf of several hundred publishers. Its talks with Google broke down in May. On 26 June, Repropol asked UKE to set the fee. Poland has changed its copyright law to bring in an EU rule that gives press publishers a right to be paid. Under that law UKE should decide within 60 days of a request. If it asks an expert for an opinion, it has 30 days from the day it gets that opinion. The whole case can never take longer than six months. UKE is now using most of that time.

On the same day a second group filed its own request. It is the Union of Digital Publishers Employers, or ZPWC. Its talks with Google ran from May to July and ended without a deal. Its members include Agora, Wirtualna Polska, Ringier Axel Springer Polska, TVN Warner Bros. Discovery and Interia. The group paid a Swiss consultancy, FehrAdvice, to work out what the news in Google’s Polish search results is worth. The answer was about 121 million euros a year, or 514 million zloty.

In Poland UKE, not a court, sets the price Google pays

Poland is one of the few EU countries where a regulator can set the price Google pays for short extracts and headlines. In most countries this is left to courts or to private talks. The result will become a reference point for the Polish market. Other EU countries will watch it too, because many of them still find Article 15 of the EU copyright rules hard to enforce. Google has not said what it pays Polish publishers today. Any UKE decision can be appealed in court. Publishers say that could stretch the case to three years.

An expert valuation could push the ruling into early 2027

UKE may name an expert to put a value on the content. That would restart the 30-day clock. So a decision may come in the first weeks of 2027 rather than before Christmas. Talks began in January 2025, which means publishers will have waited at least two years for a figure. At the same time, a group of ten smaller online publishers is still talking to Google on its own. Google has also added a switch in Search Console that lets a site opt out of AI Overviews, the AI summaries at the top of search results. That gives publishers something more to bargain with.