Page "Copyright law of the European Union" Paragraph 1

Attempts to harmonise copyright law in Europe ( and beyond ) can be dated to the signature of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works on 9 September 1886: all European Union Member States are signatories of the Berne Convention, and compliance with its dispositions is now obligatory before accession.

The first major step taken by the European Economic Community to harmonise copyright laws came with the decision to apply common standard for the copyright protection of computer programs, enacted in the Computer Programs Directive in 1991.

A common term of copyright protection, 70 years from the death of the author was established in 1993 as the Copyright Duration Directive.