Updated 2019-04-11 (expand)

This page contains an UNOFFICIAL calculator for the upcoming vote in the EU Council on the Copyright Directive. It is tailored for this specific vote (in particular it only checks for Qualified Majority), and thus may not be applicable for other EU Council votes. While it is based on data used in an official EU calculator (fetched on 2019-04-07), it is provided for convenience only - please do not rely solely on this tool for any critical analysis.

The proposed Copyright Directive needs approval from the EU Council before Member States are required to start implementing it in national law.

As the EU Council vote - expected on April 15 - draws closer, what seemed at first like a done deal looks less so by the day.

Some highlights of recent developments:

• According to @LauKaya of Politico, Italy, Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Poland will vote no, while Belgium and Slovenia will abstain. In this scenario, Germany can singlehandledly decide the outcome (with or without Brexit).
• Sweden may vote against the directive. Sweden alone will not make a difference, however it may affect how other governments vote.
• The UK may leave the EU on April 12, i.e. before the vote. Jean-Claude Juncker had this to say to Reuters: "A 'no-deal' at midnight on the 12th of April is now a very likely scenario." NOTE: this is no longer the case, see below.
• Germany may be forced to abstain. ("Technically, the German government would actually have to abstain as long as this disagreement isn't resolved, and an abstention would have the same effect in the EU Council as a No vote.")

There are a lot of open questions as to what will happen, but there are some very real scenarios in which the directive may be rejected. In short, though, "it depends":

Scenario 1 is built on the assumption that @LauKaya's statement holds, that Germany abstains, and that everyone else supports the directive.

Scenario 2 is built on a similar premise, but differs from scenario #1 in that Germany votes yes, that there is a Brexit on April 12, and that Sweden votes no. In this scenario, the directive could still be rejected if one or more countries representing roughly the population of Sweden also votes no.

"Interesting" countries (i.e. UK and countries where there is a real possibility for No or Abstain) are marked in bold.

Please feel free to send any questions or concerns to: info@copyrightframework.eu