EIFL has joined the call by a coalition of stakeholders to the European Commission and the European Parliament to ensure that consultation on copyright matters is conducted in a way that is fair and open to all European citizens and stakeholders.

The coalition represents libraries, consumers, civil society organizations, news publishers, journalists, online services, Internet service providers and IT companies from all over Europe.

The European Commission public consultation on 'Online platforms, cloud & data, liability of intermediaries, collaborative economy', part of the Digital Single Market Strategy for Europe, is open from 24 September until 30 December 2015. In the consultation, the Commission seeks views to better understand the social and economic role of platforms, market trends, the dynamics of platform-development and the various business models underpinning platforms. All good so far.

However, there are two problems. Certain questions in the consultation dealing with the creation of new, controversial copyrights for publishers are open only to rightsholders to answer, thus denying relevant stakeholders and citizens the means to also give their views on the topic. Secondly, the Commission is set to announce proposals for copyright reform on 9th December 2015 which covers these issues, three weeks before the end of the consultation and therefore before any analysis of the answers can be carried out.

EIFL has joined the coalition of stakeholders in signing two letters addressing these issues. 

The first letter is to First Vice-President of the European Commission, Mr Frans Timmermans, responsible for Better Regulation and Inter-institutional Relations, calling on the Commission to uphold EU policies on better regulation. The letter asks in particular to ensure that Commission proposals on copyright reform are not issued before relevant public consultations have been completed, that impact assessments are published before legislative proposals, and that all EU stakeholders, citizens, and businesses are permitted to respond to any questions posed in consultations.

In a second letter to the European Parliament (europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/home/) - committees on Legal Affairs (JURI), Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO), and Culture and Education (CULT) - the coalition asks MEPs to uphold the Parliament's position against adding controversial new forms of copyright in Europe. The Parliament adopted in a resolution in July 2015 (the Reda Report) rejecting so-called 'ancillary copyrights', and called for transparent and open consultations in the copyright reform process.

Read the letter to VP Timmermans here, and the letter to the European Parliament here.