This report covers COMMUNIA’s activities between January 1, 2025 to November 30, 2025. This corresponds to the third reporting period for our structural grant from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, which started in July 2022.
2025 marks a consolidation phase for COMMUNIA’s work at the European level. Building on the momentum generated by our campaign for a Digital Knowledge Act in 2023–2024, and on the renewed political attention to copyright issues triggered by the rise of generative AI, 2025 was a year of sustained engagement with the new European Parliament and Commission. With a new mandate in place, our efforts centred on refining our policy proposals, strengthening relationships with institutional actors, gathering evidence of the barriers faced by public-interest institutions, and contributing substantively to emerging regulatory debates—in particular around AI, research rights, and unfair licensing conditions.
The following achievements stand out:
- A report on unfair licensing practices: We gathered evidence—including confidential licensing clauses—on the contractual barriers faced by libraries. Beginning with a workshop with licensing managers and policymakers, this work culminated in a widely referenced report and multiple contributions to consultations at both EU and national levels. The report has been highlighted by Commission officials, Members of the European Parliament, civil-society organisations, and academic experts.
- A proposal for a general scientific research exception: We strengthened our work on research rights through a new policy paper and submissions to consultations related to the European Research Act and other initiatives affecting access to and the reuse of research resources. This work increased visibility for the needs of non-institutional researchers and put forward innovative solutions to prevent publishers from using freedom of contract to the detriment of researchers.
- Our AI-related work: We played an active role in the General-Purpose AI Code of Practice discussions, drafted amendments for the European Parliament’s own-initiative procedure on copyright and generative AI, and released a new policy paper on AI-generated outputs. Our advocacy for user-rights safeguards is reflected in both the final version of the Code of Practice and the draft compromise amendments to the parliamentary procedure.
- Fixes to the European copyright framework: Anticipating the Commission’s evaluation of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM) Directive, we used 2025 to explore necessary reforms to better support users and public-interest institutions.
This is a revised version of our report submitted to Arcadia, published here for transparency.
