At the eve of the 2024 elections, European publishers call on the European Parliament to uphold a vibrant publishing sector, the largest cultural industry in Europe, ensuring that we can continue to freely publish a wide variety of books, guaranteeing freedom of expression, a plurality of opinions and our democratic values.
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Press Release: European Parliament adopts its position on the Digital Markets Act and clarifies that gatekeeper abuses against the cultural sectors will no longer be tolerated
The Federation of European Publishers welcomes the adoption today by the European Parliament of its position on the proposed Digital Markets Act (DMA) Regulation. The DMA is a once in a generation opportunity to tackle the anti-competitive behaviours of the biggest online services acting as gatekeepers on the market. The book sector has been affected by such abuses for decades, having no choice but to rely on these services to bring their works to consumers.
Book publishers face consistent abuses in their relationship with some gatekeepers, who they supply with their books and e-books, while being at the same time their direct competitor as publishers. These anti-competitive behaviours range from a lack of data sharing, self-preferencing of the gatekeeper’s products, to the imposition of abusive contractual clauses (such as MFNs).
The adopted text provides important positive steps towards fair competition on the Digital Single Market, and MEPs adopted during the plenary vote an important amendment that clarified the scope of some of the services covered by the DMA, closing loopholes that gatekeepers could have used to prolong their abuses against the cultural sectors. Another amendment to complete the interoperability obligations of the DMA and ensure that consumers would benefit from interoperable e-books was narrowly rejected.
According to Peter Kraus vom Cleff, President of FEP, “publishers and booksellers were the canary in the mine of gatekeeper abuses, witnessing the rise of Amazon 25 years ago. Today’s vote is a clear signal that anti-competitive abuses will no longer be tolerated. We regret that the interoperability rules could not been strengthened further, but the vote showed the very strong support for it across the political spectrum. We now call the colegislators to confirm the progress achieved in the coming trilogues and finally ensure fair competition online.”
ENDS
For more information contact:
Quentin Deschandelliers, FEP Legal Advisor
qdeschandelliers@fep-fee.eu
+32 2 776 84 63
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