The European Parliament is expected to vote next week on a Copyright Directive law which has starkly divided opinion in Europe, Partit Demokratiku warned on Monday.

Articles 11 and 13 would respectively ban linking to news articles without paying for a licence from each news-site you want to link to, and create a copyright filter preventing people from sharing content which the filter suspects may be breaching copyright.

Many experts and organisations oppose this Directive, which would be imposed as law on all current 28 member states of the EU. Those opposing this Directive include Wikipedia, many technology and onternet experts, the United Nation's Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, Creative Commons and others, the party said.

"Lobbyists in favour of the proposal speak of a need to constrain technology giants such as Google and Facebook. However, critics of this Directive also point out that smaller businesses and enterprises will not be able to afford the costs which will be created for them when they attempt to comply with the regulation," it said.

Partit Demokratiku's interpretation is that Article 13 of this Directive does not hold to the legal criteria of certainty, foreseeability, and predictability, and so its remits and legal terms are unclear and leave too much leeway for exploitation.

It called on Malta's MEPs to oppose this law in the EU Parliament, a least until such time that the directive is more clearly defined.