Your voices have been heard by the European Parliament and by the European Commission! After handing over the half a million signatures yesterday, the parliament voted today with a big majority against any restriction of the Freedom of Panorama!

When I handed over the petition yesterday to MEP Julia Reda, she was “overwhelmed by the responses to the petition” and stated that “the petition has changed the debate in the parliament considerably and a lot of the parliamentary groups that originally voted for a restriction of Freedom of Panorama are clearly changing their mind about this.”

And the debate changed indeed – even MEP Jean-Marie Cavada, who started everything with his proposal of restricting the Freedom of Panorama in the first place, called upon the other members of the Parliament to vote against his own amendment. Many politicians brought the Freedom of Panorama up in the debate and mentioned that they’ve received “hundreds of e-mails and letters” from concerned people – from you!

The European Commission also gave a clear statement by Commissioner Günther Oettinger that they “don’t intend to restrict the Freedom of Panorama”. Instead he says that “what you can see with your eyes as a citizen, on public places and streets in Europe, you should be allowed to also photograph it with a camera.”

The primary goal is accomplished. The parliament voted under applause that the existing Freedom of Panorama be taken away from nobody and we can all take a deep breath. However, we do not forget about photographers in France, Italy and other countries that currently don’t enjoy this Freedom. We hope that the European Commission understood that this essential freedom has to apply all over Europe and we will closely monitor the proposal for the copyright reform by the European Commission that is due by the end of the year.

I thank you all for raising your voices and I’m glad that the parliament listened to our concerns!

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