European Commission opens infringement proceedings against Slovenia for failing to apply the InfoSoc and CRM Directives

IRIS 2026-2:1/4

Eric Munch

European Audiovisual Observatory

On 30 January, the European Commission decided to open infringement proceedings by sending a letter of formal notice to Slovenia (INFR(2025)4023) for failing to correctly apply the Directive on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the Information Society (Directive 2001/29/EC – InfoSoc Directive) and the Collective Rights Management Directive (Directive 2014/26/EU – CRM Directive).

Slovenia’s mandatory collective management scheme for authors’ public communication rights was considered by the Commission to violate both the InfoSoc and CRM Directives. The Commission considers that this goes against EU copyright law, which provides authors with a choice to exercise their rights individually or to entrust or transfer the management of all or part of them to a collective management organisation or to independent management entities, prompting the opening of the infringement procedure.

In its press release, the Commission adds that this “leads to a deprivation of author's exclusive rights and conflicts with the freedom of rightsholders to withdraw their rights from collective management, guaranteed by EU law. The mandatory collective management scheme provided under Slovenian law constitutes a limitation to the rights defined in the Directives.”

Slovenia has two months to reply to the arguments raised by the Commission. In the absence of a satisfactory response, the Commission may decide to send a reasoned opinion to Slovenia.