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In the European Union, there is no general principle for the use of copyright protected material comparable to the fair use/fair dealing principle in the US. Directive 2001/29/EC defines an optional, but exhaustive set of limitations from the author´s exclusive rights under the control of the “three-step test”. This is a clause in the Berne Convention that establishes three cumulative conditions to the limitations and exceptions of a copyright holder’s rights. The Directive has been transposed by Member States with significant freedom.

The Swedish Copyright Act was amended to implement the Directive. It contains a number of limitations, while the three-step test has not been implemented.

In the patent application process, inventors not resident in Sweden must appoint a local agent.

The managing director and their deputies in a Limited Liability Company must reside in the European Economic Area (EEA).

At least 50% of the board of directors and of the deputies in a Limited Liability Company must be residents of the European Economic Area (EEA) .

It is reported that the right of access to public procurement is limited to regional trade agreement partners and members of the WTO’s Government Procurement Agreement.

The European Regulation No. 1042/2013 amending the Council Implementing Regulation No. 282/2011, declares that from January 2015, all supplies of telecommunications, broadcasting and electronic services will be taxable at the place where the customer belongs. These include, inter alia:
- images or text, such as photos, screensavers, e-books and other digitised documents e.g. PDF files;
- music, films and games, including games of chance and gambling games, and of programmes on demand;
- online magazines website supply or web hosting services distance maintenance of programmes and equipment;
- supplies of software and software updates advertising space on a website.

Both EU and non-EU suppliers have to register for VAT purposes and comply with the relevant obligations of the Member State where the customer is established, has his/her permanent address or usually resides. This may be burdensome as there are 81 VAT rates across the 28 EU countries and the rates may vary between 3% (Luxembourg) to 27% (Hungary) across member states. Furthermore, member states impose varying thresholds at which companies must begin paying VAT, ranging from EUR 0 to EUR 60,000.

As an alternative to obtaining multiple VAT registrations in each Member State where a supplier has a customer, affected suppliers may be able to opt to account for VAT across the EU via a a web-portal in the Member State in which they are identified. Hence, the system, known as the Mini One-Stop Shop (MOSS) scheme, allows taxable persons to avoid registering in each Member State of consumption.

The EU Copyright Directive allows “fair compensation” for copyright owners. As a result, several Member States have imposed national levy systems.

In Sweden, levies are collected by the COPYSWEDE society and are paid by manufacturers and importers. Levies are applied, as follows:
- MiniDisc 0.020 SEK: EUR 0.
- CD-R Audio 0.020 SEK: EUR 0.
- DVD-R / + R Double Layer 8.5 GB 4.80 SEK: EUR 0.53.
- USB-sticks > 2GB-80 GB 1 SEK/GB: €EUR 0.11/GB > 80 GB 80 SE: EUR 8.90.
- External hard drives (2012) > 2GB-80 GB 1 SEK/GB: EUR 0.11 > 80 GB 80 SEK: EUR 8.90.
- For MP3 players, set top boxes with built-in hard drive, DVD players with built-in hard drive, TVs with built-in hard drive and other media players with built-in hard drive levies of 0 – 320 GB 1 SEK/GB: EUR 0.11/GB and >320 GB 320 SEK: EUR 35.58 apply.

In order to restrict the use of house sharing sites such as AirBnB, 11 autonomous regions (Madrid, Cataluña, Baleares, Canarias, Castilla y León, Aragón, País Vasco, Cantabria, Andalucía, Asturias and Valencia) have limited the ways in which people can rent out their houses to tourists. For example, in Catalonia renting out rooms in private residences is prohibited and a flat rented to tourists must be registered with the Tourism Registry of that region. In 2014, these laws resulted in a fine of 30.000€ to AirBnB by the Catalan regional government over what it calls a "serious" breach of local laws.

Any individual or legal entity with interests in or ties to Spain has the right to acquire a .es domain. Ties are understood in their widest sense and include individuals and incorporated or non-incorporated entities that are based, resident or registered in Spain, which wish to aim their services either partly or in full at the Spanish market, and those that wish to offer information, products or services that are culturally, historically or socially linked to Spain.

The European de minimis threshold for import duties is harmonized. Goods with a value of up to 128 SDR / 150 EUR / 186 USD are exempted from customs duties. The VAT de minimis threshold is not harmonized within the EU and can vary between 10 and 22 EUR, i.e. Member States can decide on a value within this range to grant an exemption on VAT for imported goods.

According to Spain's de minimis rule, goods with a value of up to 19 SDR / 22 EUR / 27 USD are exempted from VAT.

The Ancillary Copyright Law requires online news aggregators (such as Google News) to remunerate news publishers for showing excerpts of content published on their pages. The collection of the remuneration is entrusted to a single collection agency, which is the organisation representing Spanish newspapers: the Association of Editors of Spanish Dailies, known by its Spanish-language abbreviation AEDE. The publishers are not allowed to waive their right. As a result, Google has withdrawn its news page from Spain.

The EU Directive on Audiovisual Media Services (AVMS) covers traditional broadcasting services as well as audiovisual media services provided on-demand, including via the Internet. Article 13 of the Directive imposes on Member States the obligation to ensure that on-demand service providers promote European works, despite there is no explicit content quota. The Directive has been implemented by Member States in different ways, ranging from very extensive and detailed measures to a mere reference to the general obligation to promote European works.

In Spain, Article 13 has been implemented via two requirements:
- Video-on-demand (VOD) providers are obliged to reserve a share of European works in their catalogue.
- VOD players are required to contribute financially to the production and rights acquisition of European works. Subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) distributors need to earmark 5% of their operating revenue for the pre-funding of European cinematographic films and films made for television, 60% of that funding being reserved for the production of works in Spanish.

The European Court of Justice has interpreted in 2014 that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) may be ordered by national courts to block customer access to a copyright-infringing website. This ruling aims to limit online piracy.

In Spain, content download and streaming websites such as newpct.com and spanishtracker.com have been blocked.

The Directive 2000/31/EC (E-Commerce Directive) is the legal basis governing the liability of Internet Services Providers (ISPs) in the EU Member States and includes a conditional safe harbor. The Directive covers any type of infringement of third-party rights, including intellectual and industrial property rights and personality rights.

The limitations on liability in the Directive apply to clearly delimited activities (mere conduit, caching and hosting) carried out by internet intermediaries, rather than to categories of service providers or types of information. While it was not considered necessary to cover hyperlinks and search engines in the Directive, the Commission has encouraged Member States to further develop legal security for Internet intermediaries.

Since not all Member States have transposed the relevant articles consistently, the national case law is divergent and leads to legal insecurity on an EU level.

Despite almost literal transposition of the E-commerce Directive, Spain has adopted specific liability exemptions for search engines according to which a company can benefit from exemption if it meets the conditions of hosting service providers. Additionally, it has adopted liability exemptions for hyperlinks applying the same conditions as the Directive's liability exemption for hosting activities.

Under the Directive on Data Retention, operators were required to retain certain categories of traffic and location data (excluding the content of those communications) for a period between six months and two years and to make them available, on request, to law enforcement authorities for the purposes of investigating, detecting and prosecuting serious crime and terrorism. On 8 April 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) declared the Directive invalid. However, not all national laws which implemented the Directive have been overturned.

In Spain, Law 25/2007 relative to retention of data relating to electronic communications networks and public communication, effective from November 2007 is still in place. Such law is only applicable to electronic communications operators and provides for a retention period in respect of traffic data of 12 months from the date on which the communication occurred.