The paper describes in §§ 1-2 the EU policy on digital libraries and the role played within it by the High Level Expert Group (HLG), with special reference to the findings in the Final Report by the Copyright Subgroup of the HLG. In §§ 3-6 it summarizes the analysis and recommendations by the Subgroup in four areas, digital preservation, web harvesting, orphan works and out-of-print works. It further discusses in § 8 four other crucial copyright issues which digital libraries have to face, which, while not addressed by the Report, might belong to a “Second Basket” of policy-making open questions. After examining in § 9 some assumptions of the EU policies in connection with libraries, archives and museums, the paper addesses in § 10 the question whether copyright as we know it still is an appropriate tool in the current digital context or should be displaced by another mechanism. Finally it analyzes the impact of the move towards a new regime (Copyright 2.0) on the costs and benefits of digital libraries.