The clock is running down on Europe’s plans to create a “digital single market” across 28 countries, and the next few months are likely to bring an all-out lobbying war as interest groups try to block or boost proposals.

Brussels has notched up a few successes over the past two years. The European Commission deserves credit for finalizing reforms of telecoms law and new rules on mobile phone “roaming” and portability.

But the EU still faces a struggle to complete the most controversial parts of its proposal, namely its plans to rewrite copyright rules for the internet era.

It also needs to get moving to clean up the epidemic of “cookie” disclaimers that crowd websites accessed from within the EU and are the result of European Commission requirements to obtain explicit consent for tracking web users’ activity.

“We still have a lot of work ahead of us,” said European Commissioner for the Digital Single Market Andrus Ansip.

In the next few months legislators will have to stay focused as lobbying picks up, and tech companies invest more money into fending off potentially constraining new rules on their activities.

“I have seen a lot of slogans and widely exaggerated statements,” Ansip said. “We need to go beyond slogans and find good answers that work.”

Copyright is a case in point. Publishers, tech companies, internet rights groups and artist networks all launched fierce campaigns to tell their side of the story — and pressure the other side to accept it. Lobbyists rented cars plastered with signs to drive around town, launched online petitions that garnered over half a million signatures and jammed the email inboxes of policymakers across Brussels and Europe.

E-privacy is another area in which lawmaking has stalled, slowed down by fierce lobbying in Brussels and national capitals.

The next six months are the make-or-break period to wrap up the files before next year’s May European Parliament election. By February, it will be too late. Reelection campaigns will take up EU officials’ head space, and the remaining files are likely to get scrapped or put on hold.

The Austrian presidency of the Council of the EU has been left to handle around 200 unfinished pieces of legislation and the surrounding lobbying drama.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Bulgaria, which held the presidency until July, had vowed to wrap up the digital single market.

The load was hefty, including major files like copyright, e-privacy, the Electronic Communications Code, a new cybersecurity regulation and a declaration of the “free flow of data” as a principle across the EU.

At the end, the Bulgarians only finalized a handful of files, including the free flow of non-personal data and telecoms, but left the consumer and media files open.

Frustrated EU diplomats said it is partially the Bulgarians’ fault. The presidency was run too heavily out of Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital, and the country wasn’t enough of an honest broker, two EU diplomats said.

The remaining files — close to half of what was unveiled in the original digital single market strategy — have now been passed on to the Austrians.

The project “is one of our priorities, to secure prosperity and competitiveness,” said Karoline Edtstadler, state secretary in the Austrian interior ministry.

But the Austrians have also toned down expectations. An early document shows it would only aim for a “progress report” on e-privacy rules — and not the prized “general approach” between capitals needed to start negotiations with European Parliament and the Commission — by year’s end.

And on copyright, a vote looms in Parliament on September 12, which could result in the institution’s position diverging from that of the Commission. If Parliament changes course dramatically, it could lead to difficult three-way talks between the Council, Parliament and the Commission — and no final compromise by the end of 2018.

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This article is part of the autumn 2018 policy primer.