Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-05-15-Speech-3-333"
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"en.20020515.13.3-333"2
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"Mr President, some Members of the PPE/DE Group support Mr Rothley's report and some do not. I am one of the latter. I would like to explain why.
The rationale behind the proposal that Member State governments will be able to allow publishers, artificially, to keep up the cost of "literature" as opposed to – as I understand it – airport novels, seems to me to be both silly and wrong. In my own country the abolition of re-sale price-fixing for books has coincided with an increase in numbers of books sold and published. No doubt this is partly the result of developments in technology, but to maintain that making literature more expensive than it need be is in some way in the public interest frankly stretches my incredulity beyond breaking point. I should like to give an example.
As the House may know, the Commissioner has written a number of books. There was one particular one that caught my fancy, which I thought I might like to buy. The cover price was not that expensive but it struck me as being a bit on the high side, so I sucked my teeth a bit and did not get it. But then I saw in a bookshop a discounted copy. Before you could say "knife" I had opened my wallet, put my money on the table and had a copy of the book. I was the beneficiary of the Commissioner's wisdom and he had a small advantage of my money which otherwise would not have occurred.
Having said all that I am a believer in subsidiarity. It seems to me that if Member States wish to introduce some kind of book pricing regime into their own country, it is not for me to stand in their way. I say that subject to one proviso, and an important one: against that background the rules of the single market should apply in their entirety. Books published elsewhere in the Community, in whatever language, should be able to be imported and sold according to the rules in force and the place of publication. Those are exactly the same principles as apply in the case of satellite broadcasting, which is essentially similar."@en1
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