EU Commission call for evidence on EU copyright rules
Contributions
25 June 2026
Secretary General's Digest
June 2026
Monthly digests
I hope you are all well despite the heatwave! After days of sweltering temperatures and back-to-back conferences in Brussels about AI, culture and copyright, I found it hard to keep my cool - and not just because of the weather. In nearly every room, the AI companies whose practices we were discussing were nowhere to be found. The elephant in the room - absent, and not even mentioned by name. How can we talk about solutions without addressing the problem?
Responding to the Commission about EU copyright rules
This month, together with my colleague Luisiana, I spent a lot of time talking with our members and shaping our three contributions of the month: first to the draft guidelines on the transparency requirements for certain AI systems under Article 50 AI Act, second to the consultant survey on the DSM Directive, and finally to the Commission’s call for evidence on EU copyright rules. Our main message in the last two contributions was to say that the DSM Directive and the AI Act have not solved the challenges audiovisual authors and their Collective Management Organisations face. The promise of appropriate and proportionate remuneration under Article 18 of the DSM Directive has been far from kept. They remain without control of their works and without any form of remuneration for the use of their works for AI purposes. To address these problems, we call for (among other actions) real transparency obligations on the use of protected works, a rebuttable presumption of use in the absence of transparency; and establishing a remuneration right for the use of protected works also in the AI context, collectively managed by CMOs. These are essential measures to bridge the power gap between AI companies, streaming platforms and the creative community. Read our response to the call for evidence.
Related
A London send-off
Winding back to the beginning of June, our Chair, Barbara Hayes, hosted the SAA Board in London. We also had the pleasure of getting an exclusive guided tour of the House of Lords by Lord Tim Clement-Jones, ALCS Chair. We also paid tribute to Robert Staats, our esteemed and loyal Board Member since the SAA's founding in 2010, who has now moved on from VG WORT in Germany. We warmly welcomed his successor, Constanze Semmelmann, into the fold.
Stars in the European Parliament
The MEP Eva Maydell (EPP, BG) organised two events in the European Parliament on 23 June, first a roundtable discussion with Darren Aronofsky, the American filmmaker, to discuss the impact of AI on the creative industries, and then the launch of RSL Media - an opt-out registry - with Cate Blanchett and Steven Soderbergh. It was interesting to see how attractive to MEPs were these Hollywood stars. However, none of the MEPs challenged the interest of the proposed registry, even after Steven Soderbergh explained the limits of such a mechanism: “you can use everything I have done, except my face and my voice. But I do not own my work, it is Warner Brothers”.
Before the holidays (almost there)
Before leaving for my long-awaited holiday at the end of July, I will first be going to Luxembourg for the CJEU hearing in the Streamz case (C-663/24). After that, I will go to Paris to speak at the Forum Entreprendre pour la Culture for a roundtable on AI in Europe. Furthermore, my team and I will continue preparing our panels for the Sarajevo Film Festival in August and our many autumn events.
Wishing you all a well-deserved break, wherever the summer takes you.
Cécile