The European Parliament shadow rapporteurs on the reform of copyright made excellent progress at their meeting on Thursday 17 January on provisions on proportionate and fair remuneration (Articles 14 to 16). This chapter will now be finalised by written procedure.
The next meeting of shadow rapporteurs will be on 23 January and will discuss works that are not commercially available (Articles 7 to 9).
The draft directive introduces new exceptions to copyright rules, encourages licensing contracts with platforms and sets new rules to ensure the smooth functioning of the market for the exploitation of protected works and other subject matter.
At this stage, neither the Council nor the Parliament has adopted its position on this text that was presented as long ago as September 2016. According to a provisional timetable, the legal affairs (JURI) committee vote will take place on 27 March.
The most controversial issues of this reform concern to the creation of a related right for publishers, and addressing the value gap (see EUROPE 11941). Parliament is considering, further, introducing an inalienable right to remuneration in the draft directive.
For the moment, the shadow rapporteurs do not appear to be going for an inalienable right to remuneration, much to the regret of the S&D and Greens/EFA Groups. The compromises produced by rapporteur Axel Voss (EPP, Germany) pick up a recital stating that fair and proportionate remuneration of authors and artists should not lead to an additional duty. This recital was not discussed at the meeting of 18 January. Furthermore, the issue the issue of the inalienable right might crop up again in discussions on Article 13 on the use of protected content: Voss wants to open discussions on a new Article, 14a on the contractual obligation for fair remuneration during these discussions which re-open the issue of inalienable right.
The next meeting has been scheduled for 23 January. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)