On 25 May 2018, after months of discussions, the EU Council’s Permanent Representatives Committee (COREPER) finally agreed its position on the draft Copyright Directive (see the official press release here), although it has been suggested that Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Belgium and Hungary did not support it.

The agreed text (read it in full here) will serve as the mandate for the Council Presidency to negotiate with the EU Parliament, once the Parliament has agreed its own position. The EU Parliament Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) is due to vote on a form of text on 20-21 June 2018.

The Council’s position differs only slightly from the draft published on 17 May (see our earlier report commenting in full on the draft here).  The only substantial differences between the agreed text and the 17 May draft relate to Article 11 (introducing the controversial new press publishers’ right).  The changes arguably make the exclusion of insubstantial parts of a press publication from the new right less clear than it was, by relegating the test of no ‘independent economic significance’ for short extracts to a Recital. The permitted alternative (and familiar) ‘expression of intellectual creation’ test remains in the operative Article 11.

DSM Watch will be back with an update once the Parliament’s JURI Committee has voted!

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