Communia’s Open Letter for protection of the users’ fundamental rights

On 20 April, Communia and 20 other users’ rights organisations published an open letter, calling upon the European Commission to maintain its commitment to the users’ fundamental rights in its anticipated guidance on the implementation of Article 17 of the DSM Directive.

The open letter is a reaction to the CJEU’s notice that the date for the Advocate General’s opinion in the case C-401/19, which regards Article 17 of DSM Directive and compliance with users’ fundamental rights, will be postponed by almost three months. This can crucially affect the highly-anticipated Commission guidance for Article 17 implementation that are supposed to include strong user rights safeguards. The latest development, however, can indicate that there are strong political pressures in the background, attempting to reduce users’ rights in the upcoming guidance.

Thus, Communia addressed the open letter to the Commission, urging it “not to weaken its guidance through open ended exception clauses that seem to benefit particular rightsholders at the expense of users’ fundamental rights” and not to diverge from its stance previously taken before the CJEU.

As the DSM Directive implementation deadline looms, it will be interesting to see which stans the Commission will take in its highly-anticipated guidance.

The Communia’s open letter in full is available here, for more information, see here.