This book inquires into the competence of
the EU to legislate in the field of copyright, and uses content analysis
techniques to demonstrate the existence of a normative gap in copyright
lawmaking. To address that gap, it proposes the creation of benchmarks of
legislative activity, reasoning that EU secondary legislation, such as directives
and regulations, should be based on higher sources of law. It investigates two
such possible sources: the activity of the EU Court of Justice in the
pre-legislative era and the EU treaties. From these sources, the author
establishes concrete benchmarks of legislative activity, which she then tests
by applying them to current EU copyright legislation. This provides examples of
good and bad practices in copyright lawmaking and also shows how the benchmarks
could be implemented in copyright legislation. Finally, the author offers some
recommendations in this regard.