The EU Commission under the leadership of Günther Oettinger is aspiring to complete a digital single market by 2019. The initiative Digital Single Market is already partly completed and has ambitious goals for a digital Europe.
The goals of Digital Single Market
- Greater access for customers and companies to digital goods and services in Europe
- A productive legal environment for digital networks and services
- Maintaining the growth potential of digital economy.
One of the points, which has already been reached in 2015 on the Roadmap, are the „legislative proposals for a reform of a copyright regime“: Europe-wide uniform regulations for collective recognition of copy- and related protection rights. The new EU-directive (Guideline 2014/26/EU) should, amongst other things, facilitate the obtaining of licenses from multiple areas used in digital streaming, such as with Spotify and YouTube. This guideline is to be implemented in national law until 10 April 2016.
Digital assemblies and electronic voting
The new law will, not only provide codetermination for copyright law, but also for CRMs. In § 19 (3) the CRMs are obliged to put in their future statutes respective clauses to fulfil the requirements for participants to be able to take part in an assembly or decision-making without physical attendance.
„The CRM provides in its statute the prescriptions by which the participants of an assembly are able to take part without attendance on the spot, or without a representative, and allows them to exercise their voting rights by means of electronic communication. The CRM can allow further electronic exercise of the rights of members“
This way virtual assemblies and online voting and elections will be made compulsory in the future of CRMs.
Digitalisation knows no boundaries
The EU-Guideline 2014/26/EU and the implementation of it in Germany are good examples of the progressive standardisation of legal parameters in the digital era. This is also required by the users. Thanks to digital media and services national boundaries are disappearing, and barriers to participation and collective management are shrinking. The Roadmap of the Digital Single Market is not far from its completion and we are looking forward to innovations for a single digital market in Europe.