What Does the European Commission Make of the EU Copyright Acquis When It Pleads Before the CJEU? The Legal Service’s Observations in Digital/Online Cases

This is the first study entirely devoted to analysing the content of the European Commission’s observations in CJEU copyright referrals, with an emphasis on the online/digital dimension. It examines the Commission’s view of the EU copyright acquis in relation to economic rights, exceptions and limitations and enforcement, and evaluates it in light of international and EU law. The observations have been sometimes consistent with case law, but this has not been so in a number of topical instances. This contribution suggests that all this signals an (unsuccessful) attempt on the side of the Commission to persuade the CJEU to ‘depart’ from consolidated case law, justified more by policy considerations rather than a rigorous reading of the law and earlier jurisprudence.