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BRUSSELS—News aggregators like Alphabet Inc.'s Google news search may have to pay publishers to list snippets of articles on their websites under plans by the European Union's executive body to update the bloc's copyright rules.

The European Commission is slated to propose that national legislation be allowed to require news publishers to claim compensation from internet companies, according to an internal document.

The document outlines the commission's preferred policy options for its coming proposals to update the bloc's copyright rules, expected in late September. The proposals are still being discussed internally.

The possible EU move to pave the way for potentially lucrative agreements between publishers and web giants could be a boon to news publishers who have been hurting from falling revenue as more readers consume news online.

But the draft rules could be a blow to internet companies like Google who may now have to negotiate individual deals with publishers if they want part of the newspaper articles to appear in their news search service.

"This is not about an EU levy on search engines," said European Commission spokesman Christian Wigand. "Our objective is to make sure that Europeans can access a wide and diverse legal offer of content."

Under current EU rules, publishers don't directly hold rights for their publications but rather enforce the rights transferred to them by the journalists and photographers they employ.

The potential new plans could allow member states to grant publishers the right to directly claim compensation from the web providers, in a bid by the EU to hand the publishers more bargaining leverage when negotiating deals.

But similar initiatives in Spain and Germany haven't yielded much financial support for publishers in those countries.

In the document, the commission notes that "none of these two recent solutions have proven effective to address publishers' problems so far," but says such a proposal could help by encouraging more harmonized action at an EU-wide level.

A Spanish law requiring Google to pay publishers for displaying any portion of their work led Google to shut down its news service in the country altogether.

And in Germany, Google refused to pay for rights to publish any content other than links and headlines and handed publishers a choice: offer them free or face the removal of snippets and thumbnails from its services like Google News.

German media company Axel Springer SE later granted Google a free license when traffic from Google News and Google's search engine plunged.

The commission says their proposal would differ somewhat from the Spanish law because it would allow news publishers to negotiate different types of agreements with web providers. It is therefore expected to be more effective for them in the long run since it would allow publishers to develop new business models in a flexible way, the document says.

But the commission's solution may not work as envisaged.

"The market power of Google is such that many content owners will choose not to charge the fees," said Matthew Jones, a partner at intellectual property law firm EIP.

For publishers who may try to charge for access to their content, Google could refuse to display their content.

"This could hurt the content owner much more than Google," Mr. Jones said.

The negotiated rights could last anywhere between one and 50 years, though they would likely apply for a shorter period since "the exploitation of news content takes place for a relatively short period after publication," according to the document.

News Corp, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, earlier this year filed an official complaint to the European Commission over Google's practices with its news search service.

News Corp claims that Google reinforces its dominance in general search by refusing to show articles at all if the publisher doesn't consent to Google's habit of "scraping" or copying content from publishers to display the results of news articles.

Write to Natalia Drozdiak at natalia.drozdiak@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 26, 2016 12:05 ET (16:05 GMT)

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