European Commission
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Cecilia Malmström
EU Trade Commissioner
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Jean-Claude Juncker
President
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Cecilia Malmström Sep 8th, 2018
We did not want to be in this position. However, the unilateral and unjustified decision of the U.S. to impose steel and aluminum tariffs on the EU means that we are left with no other choice. Our response is measured, proportionate and fully in line with WTO rules. Needless to say, if the U.S. removes its tariffs, our measures will also be removed.
Jean-Claude Juncker Jul 28th, 2018
Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, when I was invited by the President to the White House, I had one intention: I had the intention to make a deal today. And we made a deal today. We have identified a number of areas on which to work together. Work towards zero tariffs on industrial goods. And that was my main intention, to propose to come down to zero tariffs on industrial goods. We’ve decided to strengthen our cooperation on energy. The EU will build more terminals to import liquefied natural gas from the U.S. This is also a message for others. We agreed to establish a dialogue on standards. As far as agriculture is concerned, the European Union can import more soybeans from the U.S., and it will be done. And we also agreed to work together on the reform of the WTO. This, of course, is on the understanding that as long as we are negotiating, unless one party would stop the negotiations, we will hold off further tariffs, and we will reassess existing tariffs on steel and aluminum.
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Jean-Claude Juncker
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Cecilia Malmström
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Jean-Claude Juncker
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Jean-Claude Juncker
About
In the negotiations in Parliament, my team and I were able to make progress on a number of issues:
Fewer upload filters: We managed to restrict the infamous Article 17 (formerly 13) to for-profit platforms: This was not the case in the Parliament version of July 2018. The restriction to services which “play an important role on the online content market by competing with other online content services, such as online audio and video streaming services, for the same audiences” was also our doing, even though it unfortunately only made it into a recital, rather than the article itself.
Fair remuneration: Even though the text didn’t end up banning so-called “total buyout contracts”, Article 18 does establish fair remuneration of artists as a fundamental principle for the first time at the EU level. The Commission had had no such plans. In doing so, the Directive meets one of the demands from my 2014 copyright report.
Publisher/label transparency: Article 19 requires transparency from distributors, such as publishers and labels, towards the creatives whose works they exploit. In trilogue we managed to ensure that this doesn’t only happen on demand, but in the form of regular reports.
What is free must remain so: The Directive clarifies in Article 14 that the mere digitization of a work whose copyright has already expired can not fall under copyright anew. This allows platforms such as Wikipedia to publish photos of older artworks without having to worry about licensing. This stems from an amendment I filed, and was already proposed in the Reda Report.
Out-of-commerce works available: Cultural institutions like museums and libraries across Europe will be allowed to put works online which are no longer commercially available, independent of their copyright status (Article 8). In the negotiations, we were able to remove several restrictions to this right that the Commission had been planning.
Minimum standards rather than leveling down: For all new copyright exceptions and limitations that the Directive establishes at the EU level, the principle will apply that member states which already have further-reaching exceptions in national law may keep them. This provision (Article 25) was inserted at our request at the last moment, in trilogue.
Parody allowed everywhere: Article 17, paragraph 7 states that uploaders must be able to rely on a copyright exception for caricature and parody in every member state. Since such an exception doesn’t yet exist everywhere, this fulfills the demand from the Reda Report to make it mandatory across Europe.