New Spanish legislation on the aggregators' levy

4.12.2014

Question for written answer E-010198-14
to the Commission
Rule 130
Javi López (S&D) , Ernest Maragall (Verts/ALE) , Josep-Maria Terricabras (Verts/ALE) , Ernest Urtasun (Verts/ALE)

On 15 October 2014 the Spanish Parliament passed a law amending the Intellectual Property Act to introduce what is called an ‘aggregators’ levy’. This is a non-waivable author’s fee paid to a single handling body, which will collect the levy for the aggregated material even when authors and producers would prefer not to do so. With the introduction of this fee, aggregators will no longer have to obtain authorisation from publishers before aggregating extracts from their material, but will have to pay a non-waivable fee to some of them.

1. Does the Commission consider that it should be notified of the contents of Article 32(2) of the abovementioned law imposing this fee?

2. Does the Commission think that Spain’s intellectual property law, as currently worded, could limit the free movement of services in the internal market and infringe Article 56 TFEU and the Services Directive?

3. Does the Commission consider that Article 32(2) of this law may be incompatible with Directive 2001/29/EC on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society?