Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-12-16-Speech-4-109"
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"en.19991216.3.4-109"2
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"Mr President, in my own country, the United Kingdom, we had a long political debate over the value of resale price maintenance applied to books. That debate ended with the abolition of the book price-fixing agreement. There is no evidence from the United Kingdom of less choice, higher prices or of any reduction in specialist bookshops. Indeed, the number of books sold and the number of publishing houses producing them appears to be increasing. This is surely a good thing. At least it seems so to me since I think that books exist to be read, or certainly that was the conclusion I reached when I studied English literature at university.
Certainly, under the principles of subsidiarity, if a Member State wishes to impose resale price maintenance on books, so be it. Moreover, if two or more Member States wish to create an internal area of joint resale price maintenance in respect of books, good luck to them. But this has to be compatible with the single market.
Any such statutory system must have no effect as regards books sold outside the limits of the Member States' jurisdiction. Nor should it affect books brought in or brought back into it, an increasingly widespread and popular means of book-selling developing in conjunction with e-commerce, which is entirely in accordance with the principles of the single market, and provides enormous opportunities for small niche businesses.
Any suggestion that this should take place is illiberal. It is contrary to the principles of the single market and, in my view, is de facto a form of censorship, and artificially rationing the supply of books in favour of the better-off. Furthermore, I believe that it prejudices a proper and legitimate aspect of intra-European trade, threatening to reduce the movement of literature across Europe to the level of pornography sent through the post, so I am reliably informed, in unmarked brown manilla envelopes, and in the free world reducing the legitimate trade in books to the level of smuggling in and out of eastern Europe of so-called subversive literature. I, for one at least, am not in favour of that because I believe it is old-fashioned, illiberal, reactionary and, in its longer-term effect, philistine."@en1
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