Implementing the Marrakesh Treaty in Europe - A Guide

The Council of the European Union (EU) approved the legislation on the Marrakesh Treaty on 17 July and the text was published in the Official Journal of the EU on 20 September 2017.

With EU legislation implementing the Marrakesh Treaty now in force, Member States have a clear deadline of 10 October 2018 by which they must have transposed the EU legislation into their national laws.

The EU Directive (2017/1564) sets out the broad lines of what Member States must do.

The Regulation (2017/1563) allows for the Directive's provisions to apply across the Union's internal and external borders. (A Directive is a legislative act that sets out the goals that all EU countries must achieve. However, it is up to the individual countries to devise their own laws on how to reach these goals. A Regulation is a binding legislative act that must be applied in its entirety across the EU¹.)

The legislation leaves Member States with various details to fill in and some important choices to make. With this in mind, IFLA, in partnership with EBLIDA, developed a guide (adapted by kind permission from the EIFL Guide to the Marrakesh Treaty) aimed at explaining the Directive and Regulation to EU and EEA libraries and library associations and setting out recommendations for implementation into national law (transposition).

The guide should help our members in their advocacy work to ensure that their countries make a good transposition of the EU legislation into their national law in a way that prioritises the interests of blind and other visually impaired or print-disabled people and also helps institutions and libraries to best serve them under the Treaty.

It is available in standard (Word, PDF) and large print (Word, PDF) versions.

Background information

• In Europe, one in 30 Europeans experience sight loss; this represents a population of about 17 million people or 6% of the 285 million people estimated to be visually impaired worldwide².

 

“The Marrakesh Treaty requires its parties to provide exceptions or limitations to copyright and related rights for the benefit of blind, visually impaired and otherwise print-disabled persons, such as dyslexic people. The treaty also allows for the cross-border exchange of special format copies of books, including audio books and digital files, and other print material between those countries that are parties to the treaty.³”.

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