[PRESS RELEASE] Publishers welcome the balanced assessment and recommendations of the Culture and Education Committee for the European book sector

The Federation of European Publishers (FEP) salutes the adoption with a large majority of the report on the Future of the European Book Sector today in the Culture and Education Committee (CULT) of the European Parliament. It underlines the societal contribution of the book sector and makes recommendations to help publishers face some key challenges.

The report recognises the importance of an independent and diverse publishing sector to enable freedom of expression and remain a European champion. However, the sector requires urgent measures to face important challenges, such as unfair practices from Big Tech companies, inflation and rising costs, the green transition and generative AI.

To this end, MEPs call the Commission and Member States to invest more in reading promotion, introduce cultural voucher programs to help citizens buy books, provide support for publishers to become more environmentally sustainable and make their books accessible, properly enforce the Digital Markets Act and introduce new obligations to guarantee the interoperability of e-readers.

Ricardo Franco Levi, President of FEP, declared: “Thanks to the work of the Rapporteur, Tomasz Frankowski, and of the shadow Rapporteurs, the CULT Committee adopted a balanced report with essential proposals to ensure that Europe remains a prosperous environment to provide books to educate, inform, entertain citizens. We call on the Parliament to fully support the report during the vote in plenary after summer so the Commission and Member States can start working on implementing its recommendations”.

For more information contact:

Quentin Deschandelliers, FEP Legal Advisor
qdeschandelliers@fep-fee.eu
+32 2 776 84 63

FEP is an independent, non-commercial umbrella association of book publishers’ associations in Europe. FEP represents 29 national associations of publishers of books, learned journals and educational materials, in all formats, in Europe. FEP is the voice of the great majority of publishers in Europe.

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