At a hearing yesterday in the European Parliament´s Legal Affairs Committee the European Commission, European Union President and libraries spokesperson all took strong positions against the weakening of the Marrakesh Treaty legislation by introducing compensation, commercial availability or authorized entity registration clauses into the Regulation and Directive now being considered. Marco Giorello of the European Commission summed up this sentiment with a very clear statement: “Concerning market availability and compensation proposals and given the specificity of this issue, there is no need to add them to this legislation that clearly responds to a clear problem of “market failure” and to introduce to the internal market additional requirements would not be justified in light of the additional burdens it would mean.”
Maria Martín Prat, Copyright Head at the European Commission, opened the meeting by admitting that the EU was initially against the idea of a treaty but that the EU´s position evolved over time as did its commitment to reach a positive result at the 2013 diplomatic conference in Marrakesh when she said “we couldn´t leave Marrakesh without a Treaty”. She insisted on keeping the EU legislation user-friendly and without unnecessary barriers.
The President of EBU, Wolfgang Angermann was very clear: “we demand total respect for article 11 of the legislation that excludes the possibility of commercial availability and compensation schemes”. Referring to the publishers who are asking for commercial availability rules, he said that “some people would like our accessible bookshelves to be empty and to only allow us to have books that can be purchased, and that would be discriminatory against blind persons. On compensation for publishers there is no need for incentives because the Treaty exists in the first place because of a market failure by the same publishers.” He said it made no sense for blind persons organizations to have the double burden of producing the formatted books and also paying publishers for them. Mr. Angermann voiced strong support for the key elements of the European Commission proposal to assure full compliance with the Marrakesh Treaty.
Stephen Wyber in representation of International Librarians explained the essential role of librarians in distributing accessible books around the world. He said that if the EU did not get their legislation right, by adding more administrative and financial burdens, the Treaty would not be able to serve millions of blind and visually impaired persons globally.
The Directive and the Regulation will be put to a vote on February 28 in the European Parliament´s Legal Affairs Committee when over 100 amendments from the different political groups will be considered. After the vote, the European Parliament, led by rapporteur MEP Max Andersson, will begin negotiations with the Council (EU member states) in order to reach a final agreement on the legislation. Once the Directive and Regulation are adopted by the European Parliament plenary, the Council will be expected to ratify the Treaty if there are no other unexpected problems.
By David Hammerstein, EU advocate for the World Blind Union.