EVA was present last week at the 48th session of the WIPO SCCR (Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights) in Geneva.

On this occasion, Susanna Brozzu, EVA’s EU Public Affairs and Communications Manager, represented the 32 members and observers of the association and gave voice to hundreds of thousands of visual artists by advocating for their rights and highlighting the current challenges they face on a daily basis.

During this session, EVA took the floor on three separate occasions, addressing limitations and exceptions for libraries and archives, the latest WIPO Access Toolkit, and the resale right.

In her interventions, Susanna underlined that existing limitations and exceptions must be combined with adequate public funding to ensure that both authors’ rights and access to high-quality content for libraries and archives are safeguarded. By contrast, merely expanding limitations and exceptions to the point of interfering with authors’ rights would further affect the already precarious livelihoods of visual artists, whose artworks and creative labour are often undervalued.

Similarly, regarding the Access Toolkit, Susanna advocated for the toolkit to remain aligned with the fundamental principle of copyright and therefore called for the remuneration of authors for all uses of their works.

She also reminded the Committee that copyright is an essential enabler for preserving the cultural ecosystem, which can only continue to thrive if authors are able to keep creating. Exceptions and limitations alone are not the solution to increasing access; rather, fair remuneration for authors, through licensing schemes managed by CMOs, can strike the right balance between recognizing artists’ efforts and ensuring broad access.

Furthermore, she emphasized the crucial importance of the resale right, calling for its implementation to advance worldwide and for it to remain a standing agenda item at future SCCR sessions, given the growing momentum it is gaining in major developing regions such as Africa and Latin America.

Please find below the links to the three statements, and listen to her intervention below: