The copyright reform is one of the core pillars of the EU Commissions endeavor to create a real Digital Single Market within the European Union. However, despite of the first draft of the new Copyright Directive (COM (2016) 593 final) having been published some time ago (14 September 2016) the EU institutions seem to have difficulties in getting to terms with the final wording.
In Brussels as well as in Strasbourg we see a multitude of differing views on how the new law shall be phrased. This week, the Committee of Legal Affairs of the European Parliament (JURI) has once again postponed its final vote on the respective report determining the Parliament’s view and suggested amendments to the Commission’s draft. Instead of having this on the agenda for the meeting on 23/24 April 2018 it has now been moved to 20/21 June 2018. The report by JURI will serve as the basis for Parliament’s position in the following trialogue with the Council and the Commission.
Issues at stake include in particular the introduction of a neighboring right for press publishers (Article 11) and monitoring obligations for platform operators (Article 13). Only recently a compromise proposal was presented by the Council (see our blog post). A number of other documents that have been leaked over the last few weeks also provide a good insight into the discussion that JURI currently has (compromise proposal on Articles 11 and 13 and other Articles). In order to be able to conduct this discussion thoroughly, the Committee has now time until mid-June.