What they want is a tax. But they don't want to call it a "tax", because that's unpopular.
As Benedict Evans put it, when France fined Google for the same reasons:
> The shakedown continues. It’s hard to see how making tech companies pretend to ‘buy’ something that has little to no economic value to them is a path to a sustainable model for newspapers. If you want a tax and a subsidy, be honest and call it that.
https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/1414856375348482050