Commission calls on Slovenia to comply with EU copyright rules

The European Commission decided to open infringement proceedings by sending a letter of formal notice to Slovenia (INFR(2025)4023) for failing to correctly apply the Directive on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the Information Society and the Collective Rights Management Directive.

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EU copyright law provides for the exclusive rights of authors to authorise or prohibit the communication to the public of their works. It includes the choice for authors to exercise their rights individually or to entrust or transfer the management of all or part of them to a collective management organisation or to independent management entities. However, under the Slovenian law, authors have no choice but to leave the management of their right to a collective management organisation. This leads to a deprivation of author's exclusive rights and conflicts with the freedom of rightsholders to withdraw their rights from collective management, guaranteed by EU law. The mandatory collective management scheme provided under Slovenian law constitutes a limitation to the rights defined in the Directives. The Commission is therefore sending a letter of formal notice to Slovenia, which now has two months to reply to the arguments raised by the Commission. In the absence of a satisfactory response, the Commission may decide to send a reasoned opinion to Slovenia.

Find further information about:

• EU copyright rules
• EU copyright law
• Directive harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society (Directive 2001/29/EC)
• Directive on collective management of copyright and related rights and multi-territorial licensing of rights in musical works for online use in the internal market (Directive 2014/26/EU)

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