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Abstract
The European Union (EU) began to develop copyright policies as early as the 1980s even though no competence existed in the Treaties. The formulation of EU policies in the area of intellectual property has been the object of heated policy debates between a diverse range of stakeholders, at the heart of which are some fundamentally different conceptions about the nature of intellectual property and its role in the information economy. Thus, EU copyright policy is the complex outcome of the interplay between subnational, national and EU-level policy actors that were all trying to ‘frame the policy debate’ in order to control policy and policy outcomes. This article explains why certain policy choices were made in the formulation of EU policies, when several policy options were, in principle, available. It argues, essentially, that insofar as the locus of decision-making shifted towards the EU level as a result of European institutions' use of their agenda-setting and judiciary powers, policy outcomes were, in a second stage, more likely to favour liberal policy solutions.
Notes
1. This article does not look at the Directives on the legal protection of topographies of semi-conductor products and the legal protection of computer programs and the legal protection of databases, which essentially fulfil industrial policy objectives.
2. Majone Citation(1996) explains that policy windows open on those relatively frequent occasions when three usually separate process streams – problems, politics and policy ideas – come together. Policy entrepreneurs ‘concerned about a particular problem search for solutions in the stream of policy ideas to couple to their problem, then try to take advantage of political receptivity at certain points in time to push the package of problems and solutions’ (1996: 271).
3. Archives of the French Ministry of Culture.
4. See also the cases Basset v. SACEM (ECJ 402/85), Lucazeau v. SACEM (ECJ 110/88 and 241/88), Ministère Public v. Tournier (ECJ 395/87), Cholay and société ‘Bizon's Club’ v. SACEM (ECJ 270/86).
5. Archives of the French Ministry of Culture.
6. Archives of the French Ministry of Culture.
7. Directive 93/98/EEC of 29 October 1993 harmonizing the term of protection of copyright and certain related rights, OJ L 290, 24/11/1993.
8. Directive 92/100/EEC of 19 November 1992 on rental rights and lending rights, and on certain rights related to copyright in the field of intellectual property, OJ L 346, 27 11 1992.
9. Directive 93/83/EEC of 27 September 1993 on the co-ordination of certain rules concerning copyright and rights related to copyright applicable to satellite broadcasting and cable retransmission, OJ L 248, 6/10/1993.
10. Directive 2001/84/EC of 27 September 2001 on the resale right for the benefit of the author of an original work of art, OJ L 272, 13/10/2001.
11. Archives of the French Ministry of Culture.
12. Archives of the French Ministry of Culture.
13. Directive 2001/29/CE of 22 May 2001 on the harmonization of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society, OJ L 167, 22/6/2001.
14. Interview with French official, Ministry of Culture, 22 April 2002.
15. Interview with EU official, Internal Market DG, 21 September 2001.
16. If the ‘multi-level governance’ approach (Hooghe and Marks Citation2001) has shed light on the ‘multi-actorness’ of the policy-making process, it does not attempt to explain the move from the national towards the European level of governance; it only describes the policy-making process once EU policies are already in place.