EuroISPA regrets plenary vote on EU Copyright Directive

Brussels, 26 March 2019 – EuroISPA regrets that the majority of the European Parliament endorsed the Copyright Directive reform, with its Articles 11 and 13 featuring in the final agreement.

Innocenzo Genna, Chair of the Innovation and Growth Committee, commented: “A majority of policy-makers in the European Parliament ignored the concerns of more than 5 million users, civil society, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, creative SMEs and startups, innovative media and publishers,  and the Internet industry at large”.

EuroISPA members are concerned that upload filters necessary to comply with Article 13 will impact the competitiveness of European SMEs, while pushing overly cautious platforms to remove potentially legal content in order to avoid liability, with detriment for users’ rights. Furthermore, Article 11 on press publishers’ rights could limit European users’ ability to share snippets and hyperlinks online, due to unclear and partial carve-outs included in the text.

As the Copyright Directive will be transposed at the national level, EuroISPA’s national members will make concerted efforts to minimize the damage for the Internet ecosystem across Member States and address the lack of clarity in same areas of the proposal.