This is just how long it took to get it through the pipeline. It was implemented first on a national level in Germany and Spain (with disastrous results - basically the publishers decided that it wasn't worth it for them to try to extract license fees because search engines started blocking them instead and in the end the German constitutional court ruled the law unconstitutional) so now they're attempting to get it in on a level where it's harder to remove because it needs international collaboration to do so. The downside for them is that it also needs international collaboration to enact, and thus we have more chances to prevent it at the european parliament level.

So do the right thing, call every MEP from your country that isn't an EPP member and ask them to a) be there at the vote (this is CRITICAL attendance really matters) and b) vote to allow changes to the law (tomorrow's vote is about whether the law continues to the next stage unchanged or whether changes are allowed - it's not about accepting or rejecting the law in general, just in its current form)

It's possible but I think it has more to do with constantly chipping away. The more initiatives they push through the more brazen they get. GDPR was widely supported so now they go in for the kill.

> Why are they getting their way now, in 2018?

Naive guess: the loss of London as a balancer.