In the face of development of cognitive society, harmonization of the copyright law is a must. Globalization of information, ever-rising demand for knowledge as well as the emergence of new technologies have forced the movement towards bringing together legislation of different States, at least at the EU level. One step towards that goal could be a project initiated in 2002 by the Wittem Group. The result of the project is a document called the European Copyright Code. Although, the document does not constitute binding law, its harmonizing potential cannot be underestimated. Despite imperfections, the European Copyright Code offers solutions to some problems. One of the main advantages of the document is that its authors made an endeavor to find compromise between two different copyright traditions - copyright and droit d'auteur systems. However, there might be some discrepancies concerning evaluation of the outcome. The aim of the article is to present the most crucial assumptions and provisions of the European Copyright Code and to evaluate them in terms of novelty value as well as potential for fulfilling the harmonization goal.