This is really part 2 to a thread called HELP with UK Music Licencing problem? which was getting a bit long. (And I've changed the name, because we could do with a few other people contributing, and I thought a name change might help there.)

We've been exchanging comments and information about the legal situation as regards informal sessions in pubs in the UK. The current situation is very unclear, and the law is applied very in consistently all over the place, and it gets in the way of us playing sometimes.

But new legislation is pending,and we are trying to sort out what people can do to try and make it sensible and helpful rather than the reverse. And one thing we need is information about what happens elsewhere in the European Union, especially maybe in Ireland, in case someone's got it right (or dramatically wrong, for that matter.)