"[...] It is time to show that Europe can deal with the issues people care about. With the possible exception of roaming charges, our copyright rules are perhaps the greatest example, the one that most frustrate ordinary citizens. The thing you just cannot explain.
They are highly visible, highly irritating, seen by almost all as an anachronism. It's time to show Europe is capable of dealing with that frustration. Time to show Europe can be relevant, responsive, reform-minded.
What does pragmatic reform mean? It means more possibilities to access content online cross-border. It means more harmonised exceptions: benefiting researchers, teachers, cultural heritage, and user-producers. It means flexibility, so we don't have to have the same discussion every 5 years.
Just yesterday, the Commission agreed a way forward to enforce intellectual property, including copyright. We agreed that focusing on ordinary users would be heavy-handed, disproportionate, and ineffective. We agreed that new powers were not the answer either. Instead we will pursue non-legislative measures, under existing powers, focused on large-scale commercial infringements. That is the right way forward.
But even that approach to enforcement cannot stand alone. It must be accompanied by wider and significant reform. It would be highly regrettable if the current Commission could not achieve that.
But now we are also turning to a new mandate and a new generation. We have EU leaders and lawmakers committed to copyright modernisation. We have a Commission President-designate fully signed up to a digital single market.
But one thing is clear. That digital single market needs copyright reform. The essential centrepiece. Otherwise it would not be credible, it would just be words."
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