Copyright Law-Making in the EU: What Lies Under the ‘Internal Market’ Mask?

Abstract

The European Union (EU) legislative activity in the field of copyright has so far been mainly based on what is now Article 114 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which allows the EU to harmonise national laws for the establishment and functioning of the internal market. However, this provision provides for a functional competence and does not give much normative guidance regarding the content of legislation.

This article seeks to assess whether the lack of normative guidance of Article 114 TFEU has resulted in a normative gap in copyright lawmaking. For that purpose, the author uses social sciences’ techniques to map the underlying goals of EU copyright legislation, to then analyse how those goals relate to the main competence norm.

Keywords: EU, European Union, lawmaking, copyright, harmonisation, TFEU, competence

JEL Classification: K10,K19, K39