Benjamin Haddad, France’s minister for Europe Credit: Photo: Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires étrangères, 2025 / Licence Ouverte 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons France wants the billions of euros Google has paid in EU fines to lower what member states pay into the bloc’s budget. Benjamin Haddad, the Minister Delegate for European Affairs, made the case in an interview with the TV channel Franceinfo on Tuesday, Reuters reported. “This is a new revenue source for the European Union, worth €4.6 billion, that should automatically lower the contributions of all member states,” Haddad said. He didn’t specify which penalty the figure refers to; the largest recent one is the €4.125bn fine for Android, a decision confirmed by the EU’s highest court on 2 July after an eight-year legal battle. When interest is taken into account, that fine amounts to around €4.7bn, as stated by Agence Europe.
Across almost two decades of competition cases, Brussels has now fined Google a total of €10.38bn. That includes €890m in July, the first penalty under the Digital Markets Act, for favoring its own services in search and blocking app developers from pointing users to cheaper deals. Under current rules, fines that become final are already included in the EU’s general budget and reduce national contributions, either in the year they are booked or the next. France wants a firm promise that the Google money will be treated that way.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu wrote to Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, asking her to ensure the windfall reduces national payments, Agence Europe reported. Member states are now bargaining over the 2028 to 2034 budget, with summits planned in October, November and December to reach a deal by the end of the year. They remain split on both how big it should be and what it should pay for. The Commission’s draft puts the seven-year budget at about €2tn, equal to 1.26% of the bloc’s gross national income.
Under that plan, France’s average yearly payment would rise from €26bn to €36bn. That is the estimate of the French Senate, which says the bill would reach €42bn if the EU fails to agree on new sources of revenue. The push comes as Google fights the EU on another front. On Monday, it asked an EU court to overturn orders to share search data and open Android to rival AI assistants.
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