13 Amendments of Felix REDA related to 2017/2209(INI)
Amendment 14 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 a (new)
Paragraph 1 a (new)
1 a. Whereas the introduction of ancillary copyright laws have led to enormous administrative costs in the administration and enforcement of the introduced neighbouring right in Germany without any tangible and sustainable income for both publishers and journalists; whereas these laws have brought considerable legal uncertainty to the functioning of the market and have put European companies in a significant disadvantage over international competitors;
Amendment 19 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 b (new)
Paragraph 1 b (new)
1 b. Having regard to Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents;
Amendment 21 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 c (new)
Paragraph 1 c (new)
1 c. Whereas journalists require direct, immediate and unencumbered access to information by public administration to properly hold authorities to account;
Amendment 23 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 d (new)
Paragraph 1 d (new)
1 d. Whereas information obtained both by right of inquiry as well as through whistle-blowers are complementary to each other and both essential for journalists' ability to fulfil their public interest mission;
Amendment 25 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 e (new)
Paragraph 1 e (new)
1 e. Whereas journalists require fullest legal protection to use and disseminate such information of public interest in their line of work;
Amendment 26 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 f (new)
Paragraph 1 f (new)
1 f. Whereas the right to demand and receive information from public administrations remains scattered and incomplete across the European Union;
Amendment 35 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 a (new)
Paragraph 2 a (new)
2 a. Is perturbed about the recourse by powerful commercial entities to SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) practices in an attempt to silence journalists from carrying out their work or otherwise interfere with their content. Calls upon the European Commission to take note of this trend and to propose legislation that would curtail these abusive practices.
Amendment 37 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 b (new)
Paragraph 2 b (new)
2 b. Reaffirms that in line with the European Charter of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights, freedom of expression is one of the most fundamental values to safeguard democracy and to enhance our European identity. Freedom of expression is not only meant to protect journalists and their sources but above all is meant to protect the right of society as a whole to receive information about all issues of interest to it.
Amendment 61 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 a (new)
Paragraph 4 a (new)
4 a. Moreover, emphasises that Member States must ensure that whistle- blowers must be given equal protection on a non discriminatory basis. Such protection must also adequately and effectively cover workers in the public sector and be administered independently of the government.
Amendment 89 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 c (new)
Paragraph 5 c (new)
5 c. Expresses concern over the negative effect of national ancillary copyright laws on the revenues of small publishers; Calls on the Commission and on the Member States to refrain from the introduction of an ancillary copyright for publishers and calls on them to instead consider introducing a presumption rule for the benefit of press publishers1a; _________________ 1aThe ancillary copyright for press publishers was introduced in Germany (Article 87f-h of the German copyright law, Urheberrechtsgesetz) and in Spain (article 32.2 of the Spanish copyright law, ley de Propiedad Intelectual). In Germany, the collecting society tasked by publishers with the enforcement of the ancillary copyright reveals in its annual reports that the annual regular income from this law remains below 10.000 Euros. In contrast, the costs for enforcement are now several million Euros, as shown in the Joint Research Center Paper 'Online News Aggregation and Neighbouring Rights for News Publishes', that was made public on December 20, 2017.
Amendment 91 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 d (new)
Paragraph 5 d (new)
5 d. Notes the attempts by public officials to restrict the dissemination of information by journalists by the abuse of secrecy or intellectual property legislation; Calls on the Commission to propose broader safeguards for journalists to freely access, use and re-use information obtained in their course of work;
Amendment 93 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 e (new)
Paragraph 5 e (new)
5 e. Calls on the Commission and Member States to ensure that journalists are given the proper tools to inquire and receive information from EU and Member State administrations;
Amendment 94 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 f (new)
Paragraph 5 f (new)
5 f. Calls on the Commission to urgently review Regulation 1049/2001 and to propose improvements to the public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents;calls on the Commission to abstain from any more efforts to prevent or deter journalists and members of the public from seeking and obtaining information held by the Commission through arbitrary hurdles; Notes with indignation any attempts to deny access to information by the use of delay tactics, bogus reasons for dismissal or unjustified narrowing of the scope of information that was requested1b; _________________ 1b In several cases, Member States have invoked copyright in order to prevent journalists from disseminating information of public interest (most famously: Unterrichtungen des Parlaments - a series of reports by the German Government to members of Parliament regarding the ongoing military deployments, such as Afghanistan). One of these cases is currently pending at the ECJ after local courts ruled in favour of the government and granted an injunction against a newspaper who published these reports. Regulation 1049/2001 - Access to information to EU documents has not been improved since 2001. On the contrary, the Commission introduced new interpretation in 2014 to the Regulation to introduce bureaucratic hurdles in order to discourage people from seeking documents via Regulation 1049/2001. The Regulation is in dire need of an update to properly account for the possibilities or proactive publication and internet mediated access (which was not taken into account in 2001). On a practical level, the access to information to Commission documents is often thwarted by misapplication of the Regulation and the systematic use of delay tactics. The Commission uses an overly narrow definition of what constitutes information unless the requester specifically asks for all information. Even then important documents such as drafts and comments are often discarded and remain undisclosed. The EMIS committee of inquiry recommended several changes to access to information in the EU, including: "83. Calls on the Commission to improve its capacities to handle document requests from committees of inquiry as well as from journalists and citizens under respective applicable document access rules, in a timely manner and with an acceptable level of quality; urges the Commission to release these documents in their native format and refrain from time-consuming and potentially content-altering format changes and format conversions; further instructs the Commission to make sure that information that is stored in a machine-readable format, e.g. a database, is also released in a machine-readable format".