Are 420 million euros as compensation for damages done by AI for all authors and artists in Europe enough?

EWC analysis of the adopted resolution on “Copyright and generative artificial intelligence – opportunities and challenges” (2025/2058(INI)) – Committee on Legal Affairs – Rapporteur: Axel Voss.

‘I have never seen an EU paper that is so clearly and unequivocally on our side’:

These are Vice-President Maïa Bensimon’s words on the final draft presented by the EU Legal Affairs Committee, known internally at the EWC as ‘The Voss Report’, and up to EP Plenary vote on 10 March 2026. On that Tuesday, MEPs adopted its recommendations to protect copyrighted creative work from use by artificial intelligence (AI), by 460 votes to 71, and with 88 abstentions. They believe that EU copyright law should apply to all systems of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) on the EU market, regardless of the place of training.

(See also EWC’s press release When Art rules)

In fact, the process of getting this paper into its agreed form took 370 days: Shortly after the JURI Legal Affairs Committee announced on 5 March 2025 that, on the initiative of MEP Axel Voss (EPP) – a report was planned shortly after the negotiations on the somewhat weak AI Act and quite useless GPAI Code of Practice and anti-authors transparency template, the EWC and its over the year 2025 growing Task Force AI* became consistently involved. Parliamentary workshops and committee meetings, several written submissions and joint letters, comments on over 700 amendments, and one-to-one exchanges with the shadow rapporteurs and MEP Voss. Here, the EWC would like to refer specifically to the study by Prof. Dr. Nicola Lucchi, which contributed significantly to the positive outcome of the report.

Particularly controversial were the questions of whether authors should be obliged to license their works and whether this compulsory licensing should be handled exclusively by collective management organisations. Based on our surveys among EWC members, we know that at least half of authors fundamentally do not want their works and creative endeavours to be used for generative AI technologies. And those who do want to license their works want to do so voluntarily and under clear conditions, such as transparency, bargaining power, time limits, or only for selected technologies that promote linguistic diversity, for example, but not for globally offered programmes that specifically eliminate professions and jobs.

Overall, the EWC welcomes in particular:

• The demand for a formal clarification of the scope of the Text and Data Mining Exception (Article 4, Directive 2019/790 (EU); “CDSM Directive”) is included five times in the adopted resolution. We expect, that the whole CDSM Directive will not be re-opened.
• For academic and scientific authors, the resolution opens up now the option to “opt out” of AI development, when works and data corpora used for scientific noncommercial research within universities, are further shared with commercial entities. This could support the authorisation claims by our fellow colleagues active in the fields of academia and research institutions.
• Licensing shall be voluntarily for the author or further rightsholder, as the report clarifies on three different stages, and also not be administered in general via CMOs, but also individually.
• The several calls for title specific transparency within the documentation template as an obligation under the Ai Act and Copyright legislation (recap: the AI office denied any specific transparency obligation, which actively hinders authors to examine, and to exercise their rights).
• The clarification of territoriality: copyright rules of the EU shall be valid in all territories where our works are used for development and subsequent uses. Until now, non-European AI developers have justified their actions by saying that they owe us nothing, as although they use European works, these are incorporated into their models in the USA or on other continents. The report makes it clear that copyright cannot be reinterpreted without limits – and that also fine-tuners or deployers have to be responsible to not use any model which is based on theft
• The reports call to set up labeling guidelines by the Commission, which shall go further then the currently developed Code of Practice for the Article 50 (AI Act).

We continue to regard the following as red lines:

• The resolution is on the standpoint for having installed a “registry” for rights reservations under the roof of the EUIPO. Even if the original proposal is softened down, we fear, that a technical hurdle can undermine the protection of a work.
• There remains the danger of a new legislative initiative that is designed to be as business friendly as possible. This does not necessarily have to be a new exception, but it could include other regulations that once again damage the sovereignty and income of authors.
• We sense a discussion coming up on how to compensate authors by a lump sum and flat fee via CMOs for the AI output. This needs to be observed, if this is attached to sui generis right, which would grant AI products rights similar to intellectual property rights, which shall be inacceptable – or simply a remuneration claim, to be administered collectively. 

The following are to be debated:

• The resolution demands for a “retro perspective copyright global license fee” on past uses, of 5-7% of the turnovers – around 420 million euros. We consider this not enough to cover the real damages in lost licenses, in lost income through competing products, in lost commissions and in subsequential losses for declining payments into pension schemes or social security. Likewise, the 5-7% would set a non appropriate precedence for future licensing. On the other hand, a financial remedy is more then due.
• The EUIPO is suggested to be a “licensing hub” for AI or GenAI rights. Here, we need to learn from the perspective of our members including our CMO members. 

* The EWC Task Force AI started with Maïa Bensimon, Nina George, Nicole Pfister Fetz and Zsuzsánna Dóczy, and included after the AGM 2025 in addition Sebastià Portell, Monika Pfundmeier, Conor Kostick, and Claus Ankersen.