Romanian Presidency negotiating mandate available ahead of Council meeting

 

17 January 2019

Ahead of the Council vote on 18 January, the Romanian Presidency’s updated negotiating mandate has been made available via Politico. Aiming for the approval of national governments, the updated mandate notably still includes the most contentious provisions, namely articles 11 and 13, of which the “core” provisions are agreed (e.g. the creation of a press publishers’ right, and a requirement to mandate filtering of uploads for platforms). Euroactiv reports that agreement on article 11 is “quite far apart”, whereas article 13 is “roughly accepted”. Modifications still to be agreed include: the exclusion of snippets from article 11, and a UGC and small business exception from article 13. On article 13 more specifically, a compromise solution as drafted by the new Romanian Presidency has also been made available via Politico detailing, amongst other suggestions, a UGC exception limited to the sharing of parts of works only, or entire works only where the UGC was generated by themselves. Facing heavy criticism, these texts have been labelled as an “utter disaster” which have been pushed by “technically illiterate bureaucrats”.