Conclusion: an incomplete protection :

The minimum put in place by the four Directives (rental and lending Directive, cable and satellite Directive, term Directive and informative society Directive) does not constitute a high level of protection for neighbouring rights.

As already stated, the Directive 92/100 leaves a lot of exploitations without any protection: broadcasting or communication to the public of audio recordings which are not commercial phonograms, broadcasting or communication to the public of audiovisual fixations ...

Moreover, the fate to which performing artists are left with the implementation of systems of presumption of transfer of their rights in the audiovisual field is particularly open to criticism and hard to justify. The very nature of a legal protection system can certainly not be to debilitate more, by a system of presumptions, the economically weaker party.
 
Furthermore, the mechanism put in place under Directive 2001/29 in relation with the private copying exception does not offer enough by way of guarantee and is too imprecise on the remuneration that must be paid to the right holders in relation with private copy. It is probably too constraining by permitting the control of the private copy in the frame of on demand services, while the access to those services is already the subject matter of an exclusive right.
One can regret that the exercise of such exclusive rights is not subject to compulsory collective management.

The level of adaptation of this legal system to new models like the exchange of files between individuals (peer to peer) has still to be demonstrated.

The moral right of performing artists has not been harmonized despite the fact that the European authorities considered the possibility of intervening in this domain. Probably this question will be raised again in the future in the light of the single market requirements.

On many points, industrial interests have prevailed over the logic of the protection of the right holders.

This raises the question of the difference in nature of the different rights grouped under the global denomination of neighbouring rights. The establishment of a legal system where the rights of the performing artists in the audiovisual field are automatically transferred to the producers can hardly be seen as building up an acquis communautaire of protection but rather as privileging a short-term industrial logic above human elements conditioning the creation and cultural development of the countries.

Apart from these limitations, one has to indicate that these Directives have allowed the establishment of a first level of protection in several European countries which until that date did not grant any protection to the holders of neighbouring rights (or granted very low protection)