August 9, 2026

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August 9, 2026

Newsletter

The European Post

Policy • Diplomacy • Strategic Insight

LATEST
New EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before AntalyaNew EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before Antalya

Streaming Giants Fight Belgium’s Copyright Rules at EU Court

Konstantinos Kavafis
Senior Reporter, Justice and Fundamental Rights

Some of the world’s largest technology and music companies spent two days in a Luxembourg courtroom this week arguing that Belgium’s copyright rules stretch European law past its breaking point. The Court of Justice of the European Union heard the case known as Streamz and Others on 6 and 7 July, in a dispute that could reshape how digital platforms pay for creative work across the continent.

The line-up of applicants reads like a roll call of the streaming economy. Google, Meta, Spotify, Streamz, Sony Music, Universal and Warner all challenged provisions that Belgium wrote into its version of the European Union’s 2019 Digital Single Market copyright directive. The Belgian Constitutional Court referred the questions to the top EU judges rather than rule alone.

At the heart of the fight sits an unusual mechanism. Belgian lawmakers created an unwaivable and non-transferable right to remuneration for authors and performers whenever platforms exploit their works. Creators cannot sign that right away, which means a musician or writer keeps a direct claim on platform revenue even after handing masters to a label.

The companies argue the design collides with core single-market freedoms. Their lawyers told the court that the Belgian model burdens the freedom to provide services and the freedom to conduct a business, and that it disrupts the balance the directive itself struck between creators and the services that distribute their output.

Rights holders see the case very differently. The directive’s Articles 17 and 18 promised performers and authors fair and proportionate pay, and defenders of the Belgian approach say a residual, guaranteed stream of income is the only way to make that promise real against companies with vast bargaining power. The Court of Justice must now decide whether that reading survives.

The stakes stretch well past a single member state. Several governments have watched Belgium test the limits of the directive, and Denmark formally intervened to defend the principle that national parliaments can top up creator protections. A ruling that endorses the Belgian model would hand other capitals a template, while a rejection would force a rewrite.

The case also revives a familiar tension. The same directive produced the press-publisher right under Article 15 that pushed platforms into licensing deals with news outlets, and this litigation asks how far states may go in bending those tools toward performers and songwriters, as documents on EUR-Lex lay out.

A judgment will not arrive quickly. An advocate general’s opinion typically precedes the final ruling by months, and the court often waits the better part of a year. Until then the copyright rules that Belgium built will stay on the books, and every platform operating in Europe will watch to see whether Luxembourg lets them stand.

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