“Now that the EUCD [EU Copyright Directive] transposal to Portugal has been finished, we’ll get into contact with eligible Portuguese news editors to negotiate Google’s access to their content (part of the Extended News Preview – ENP program),” Bernardo Correia announced in a report by ECO.

“The new law was published after public consultation in which the Portuguese Government gave all interested parties the chance to express their positions,” for which “we’d like to thank the Government, press associations and press publication editors for the positive and constructive dialogue up until now,” Google’s country manager said.

“Every offer to Portuguese editors will be based on objective and consistent criteria which respect the law and existing copyright directives, including the frequency at which the news website is shown, and the rate of ad revenue generated on pages that also show news shorts,” he added.

Relative to the next step, “a disposition in particular exists that forces us to prepare before negotiations: the new Portuguese law foresees penal action against the use of content that goes beyond ‘very short excerpts’ without sufficient permission from press publication editors, putting our team into risk of criminal accusations.”

“That means that, as far as the penal code that comes into force on January 1st 2024 is concerned, we’ll need to limit the exhibition of longer excerpts of a press publication’s content in Google searches and related products, in the case that we don’t reach an agreement before that date.”

This requirement of a change in the product “was discussed with all involved parties during the public consultation period” and “we implemented a similar approach in Austria, the only other EU country to introduce penal sanctions relating to the transgression of article 15 of the EUCD.”

Assurance

Bernardo Correia reassured that Google would not remove all news content from the search engine.

“Hyperlinks to news content and titles will remain and, obviously, we will have great pleasure in reopening, at any moment, talks with editors to re-establish longer news excerpts as soon as we reach a deal with them,” Correia added.

“And, as always, the editors have total control over the exhibition or non-exhibition of their content on the search engine, as well as under what form that content can be viewed.”

“We believe that a prosperous news ecosystem is essential to the functioning of democracy, and we have a long history of supporting journalism and press editors in Portugal, from the launch of News Showcase with 50 local publications, to the training over the last seven years of over 2,500 journalists and journalism students in Portugal with tools and emerging technologies for newsrooms,” Bernardo Costa said.

“We pride ourselves in also having supported the creation of the Aveiro Media Competence Centre to promote digitalisation and the sustainability of European news agencies. Through the Digital News Innovation Fund, we’ve also financed almost eight million euros in journalistic innovation projects in Portugal, both to local papers and to large media conglomerates,” he added.

At the same time, at the European level, “we’ve come to respond to the transposals by member states to the 2019 EUCD for respective national legislation.”

Google, up until now, has signed “contracts covering over 1,500 publications in 15 countries.”

The corporation continues its efforts “as national laws come into effect.”

The 15th article of the EUCD, known as the right to connection, allows search engines like Google to use hyperlinks freely and use ‘very short excerpts’ from news publications’ content, the company stated.

The article also creates new rights for news editors when longer excerpts from their content is used online, but without defining exactly what counts as a ‘very short’ or longer excerpt.