Because, despite what people say, the countries of the EU are distinct countries with their own legal systems.

That is true and, at the same time, the EU is forcing all countries to implement this directive into their law, whether they want it or not. There are 8 countries that don't want it, but they can't oppose.

Every country in the EU agreed to implement these directives when they joined the EU, whether they agreed to it or not. There were various stipulations on how much support there needed to be before everyone had to implement them. Some things need unanimous support (trade deals, accession), some countries have certain opts outs in certain areas

However when it comes to harmonizing copyright legislation it was agreed unaminously that 65% of the EU population, plus 55% of the EU countries, could implement laws that are binding on the rest.

Think of it like an interface and an implementation in programming.

With a good interface you do not have to know the implementation. But the implementations here are leaking hard since everybody can and does implement the directive differently, so you can't deal with the interface but you rather have to deal with each implementation separately!

So sadly no interface at all.

Actually, the analogy does apply in the general to way the EU works, and your explanation is the exact opposite of how it usually works.

The general rule of thumb is "as long as you meet the EU criteria, your product/service/etc is legal in all EU states", removing the need for figuring out red tape for each individual country. So if you have, say, a perfume that you want to sell, then as long as you follow the EU restrictions for which ingredients you are and are not allowed to use you should have access to the entire EU market. Before the EU existed you would have to find out the legal restrictions for each country separately.

Contrary to its reputation, when it comes to international markets the EU has saved companies tons of money in terms of administration due to reducing red tape.

And if you accidentally break a law because some countries did more than the directive?

IIRC you may make higher demands on your own country, but cannot restrict goods from foreign markets that meet the EU criteria (that's the entire point after all). It can get a bit weird.

For example, IIRC Dutch laws regarding for cheese production safety are more strict than what EU laws require, with mandatory weekly testing for bacterial growth. However, any cheese meeting EU laws is allowed to be sold on the market.

If Google News meets EU criteria, then why did they leave Spain after Spain introduced ancillary copyright? So goods and services are not handled the same? Or is the idea wrong?

I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know all the fine details. I merely dated a woman for four years who had a master degree in EU studies and picked up a lot of things about the general process.

Those are fine questions, but you'll have to do your own research to answer them I'm afraid.

I understand. Will do. :-)

Simpler than trying to craft a regulation that would be compatible with:

- Common law systems and civil law systems,

- with or without constitutions,

- in republics, federations, monarchies and principalties

- speaking 20-odd official languages.

The GDPR was a regulation - a type of EU law which immediately applies uniformly in every member state.

This proposal is different because it is a Copyright "Directive" - directives leave the implementation details up to the member states. If a court rules a particular member state's implementation to be in violation of the directive, the directive's wording has the supremacy and overrides the local law. Still, this leaves some leeway for member states. They may choose different approaches to reach a common EU goal, or more lax/stricter punishments provided that the directive allows for that.

each country has a different legal system, trying to make a single legislation is _really_ hard and generally not worth it. Some countries never ratify the directives either.

That's why GDPR (which is a regulation, not a directive) was such a big deal, but it came years after there was a data protection directive, allowing the systems to harmonize.

Also, directives typically describe goals, not the way to reach them. That gives individual countries some freedom.

For example, Directive 2015/720 requires member states to reduce single-use plastic bag use by 50% by 2017 and 80% by 2019, but doesn’t tell anything about how to do that.

Denmark taxes companies giving away bags, Ireland taxes every bag sold, the Netherlands made it illegal to give out free bags (with exceptions), Serbia (not EU, but aspiring to become an EU country) taxes manufacturers and importers of plastic bags, etc (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_lightweight_pla...)

And yes, there likely are opportunities to game this. If you buy a can of beer or a single-use bottle of soda in Germany, for example, you pay a deposit that you get back when you return the empty vessel. Often, you can buy the same vessel in Belgium, where the deposit is lower, or the Netherlands, where deposits only exist for bottles of half a liter or more.