Sarajevo, 25.02.2021. – In all EU-member states, governments are now implementing the 2019 Copyright Directive. Currently, however, the government of Croatia proposes to move from the Continental European Authors’ Rights regime towards the Anglo-American copyright regime, for example by making the newspaper by default the owner of employed authors’ work.

This would be very harmful for authors, including journalists, photographers, cartoonists etc. – warns European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) in a letter to its members.

– Looking at the proposed implementation of the EU Copyright Directive into Croatian Law, it seems not to reflect proper copyright protection of either authors’ economic and moral rights or publishers’ rights. The proposed legislation rather seems to misuse the implementation of the Directive to provide more rights to publishers and less to the authors – stated the letter from EFJ.

They emphasized that the proposed law lacks any mention of journalists’ work within the category of authors’ work to be protected.

– Under the EU Copyright Directive it is clear that journalists are among the authors and are specifically members of the main group who should benefit from publishers’ rights. It also has to be stressed that for many freelancers, remuneration stemming from authors’ rights is crucial. For media and journalists this is of the greatest importance. Both parties need to benefit from the Directive. We in the EFJ for this reason firmly recommend member states to stay with the Continental European authors’ rights regime that almost all member states are currently following, with equal rights for authors and publishers – EFJ concluded in their letter.