Daniel Dalton (ECR). – Mr President, well I don’t support Articles 11 and 13 and I never have. I don’t believe either of them will do what you want it to do. I don’t believe publishers or creators will make any more money. I don’t think it will hurt Google, but it will hurt consumers because big flat platforms and big publishers will face less competition.

Now we need to recognise that the internet has changed everything, and we need a balanced debate on how we are going to regulate it. But we need to do it carefully and not threaten the entire ecosystem of the internet. Article 11 as proposed does threaten news aggregators which drive traffic to publishers’ websites, especially small publishers. It does threaten the ability to post links to social media. It is not proportionate. Article 13 threatens to force platforms to check and filter all content, and it will take down legal content.

Now I accept that there are genuine problems, particularly for the music industry, but we must address them without undermining how people use the internet. Think about vlogs, twitch feeds, memes. So I hope constructive compromises will pass tomorrow, but I can’t support the report that came out of the Committee on Legal Affairs.