peer reviewed ; Following the authors’ earlier article discussing the maze of restrictive copyright rules that could apply to transformative uses of existing works, this article discusses what is the most promising approach for reforming the European copyright regime to introduce more flexibility for transformative users.The authors consider two reform proposals, both inspired by Canadian law: first, the introduction of a specific exception for user-generated content; secondly, a more ambitious transition to a semi-open ‘fair dealing’ exception, striking a better balance between flexibility and legal certainty than the current EU copyright regime.The authors argue in favour of this second proposal, which provides the additional advantage of not requiring a legislative reform but being achievable by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), if only it was willing to follow the footsteps of the Supreme Court of Canada in its ambitious new cas