Power to the People? Evaluating Good Governance Model and Civil Society Input in EU Online Copyright Policy

In 2015 the European Commission issued new Guidelines on Stakeholder Participation[1] as part of its Better Regulation Package. The Better Regulation initiative aims to improve the quality of the EU’s policy input, ‘throughput’[2] and output by setting in place guidelines and a toolbox of measures to take when preparing, managing and evaluating legislation. The Better Regulation initiative fits within a long trend of European Commission efforts to improve its policy-making, starting most notably with the Lisbon process in 2001. In 2018 the European Commission received the highest score for stakeholder engagement[3] in the OECD Indicators of Regulatory Policy and Governance (iREG)[4]. In this paper we focus on EU online governance and especially on consultation patterns[5] in policy processes pertaining to EU copyright in the digital environment. Particularly interesting in our view is the rise in citizen participation in this policy area. Copyright is a topic that many citizens hold an opinion on and wish to contribute to in policy discussions. These contributions, however, have not often been in favour of European Commission proposals. Most notably, the European Parliament rejected the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in 2012 after citizen protests arose across Europe[6]. In light of the backlash that the Commission has received in the past, we ask to which extent the European Commission’s stakeholder participation model takes into account the non-expert nature of citizen contributions? In order to answer this research question, first, our empirical analysis focuses on the European Commission’s consultation processes in copyright policy since 2014/2015 (Juncker Commission) and opposes them to the processes conducted before this date (Barroso 1&2 Commissions) (comparative and longitudinal analysis). In particular we wish to document the scope and the type of stakeholder involvement in public consultations within this policy field. Second, the paper gives critical insight on the implications of the consultations on legal copyright provisions after 2014/2015, focusing in particular on the policy process surrounding the proposed Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive (policy tracing, 2016/0280 (COD)). In this case we identify the core demands of citizens and civil society organizations and trace whether these are (being) integrated into the final policy outcome. Our paper evaluates the impact of the European Commission’s engagement efforts on citizen contributions in copyright policy, and in this manner, sheds further light on the attempts and the struggle to engage in a meaningful manner with citizens in a digital age. [1]European Commission (2015), Better Regulation Guidelines, COM(2015)215final, Strasbourg, 19.5.2015. [2]Schmidt, V. (2012) ‘Democracy and Legitimacy in the European union Revisited: Input, Output and ‘Throughput’’, Political Studies 61(1):2-22. [3]Of 34 OECD member countries and the EU. [4]OECD (2018) OECD Regulatory Policy Outlook 2018, Paris: OECD Publishing. [5]Quittkat, C. (2011), ‘The European Commission's Online Consultations: A Success Story?’, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 49/3:653–674. [6]See Meyer, T. & Vetulani-Cęgiel, A. (2017) ‘From ACTA to TTIP: Lessons Learned on Democratic Process and Balancing of Rights’ in Svantesson, D. & Kloza, D. (eds.) Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Relations as a Challenge for Democracy, Cambridge: Intersentia, pp.159-180.