Within the context of WP2, dedicated to end-users, reCreating Europe’s latest output – the (draft) Code of Best Practices and Policy Recommendations – is devised to achieve two main objectives; to facilitate understanding of copyright flexibilities through the code of best practices, and to propose reforms directed to national and EU policy makers through the policy recommendations. This blog details how these recommendations were developed, and how they will help achieve our project aim of facilitating access to digital culture through copyright law.  

Best practices – What, why and how?

The code of best practices stems from the effort to make the WP2 mapping of EU copyright exceptions digestible for end-users and non-copyright aficionados. In this sense, best practices are primarily directed to laymen, as their ultimate scope is to bridge the knowledge gap between users and copyright experts. Thanks to the code of best practices, users can become aware about the different degree of copyright flexibility ensured by national copyright laws. In this way, users will be acknowledged of the dos and don’ts in Member States, so that they will be able to benefit from the degree of flexibility ensured by national copyright laws to the maximum extent.

To draft the code of best practices, the results of reCreating Europe’s comparative analysis of EU copyright law have been transformed into takeaways, to empower users in the digital arena and thus foster access to culture.

The best practices were tested at the workshop conference organized by the Institute of Information Law, University of Amsterdam, that took place on the 21^st of September 2022. At the workshop, stakeholders and copyright experts gave their feedback and suggested to convert the best practices into a guidance, to increase the degree of user-friendliness and guarantee an easier dissemination through social networks and similar channels.

Policy recommendations – What, why and how?

ReCreating Europe’s policy recommendations stem from the effort to convert the WP2 comparative analysis into suggestions for national legislators and policymakers. For this reason, they are conceived as guideposts for the next copyright reforms taking place at the national level, to achieve a fairer copyright balance and reduce the harmonization gap amongst Member States.

These recommendations were conceptualized within the context of a workshop grouping interested EU policymakers, organized in Brussels the on the 20^th of September 2022. Thanks to these policy guidelines, the state-of-the-art of EU copyright law can give a concrete impulse to the next legislative reforms. In fact, national legislators may start from the “lessons learned” of our mapping to devise copyright flexibilities that will be more effective from a systematic standpoint. In this way, reCreating EU will also actively contribute to the EU-driven policy objective of achieving better harmonization of national statutory law within the field.

The first draft of our policy recommendations was presented to the conference in Brussels and will be improved and further enriched with the feedback and suggestions that emerged during the workshop. The exchange of inputs among the national policymakers involved will be intensified in the following months. Thus, this draft will be substantially revised in structure and the legislative approach to be promoted will be refined as well, to present the final version of the policy recommendations at reCreating Europe’s final conference (scheduled for the end of January 2023).

Author: Camilla Signoretta – SSSA

Read the draft version of the Code of Best Practices and Policy Recommendations on our Zenodo channel here.