Mr President, the Legal Affairs Committee and – once this House has given its assent – Parliament as a whole, will be submitting to the Commission a complete proposal for a directive, a legislative initiative on the fixing of book prices in the European Union. Why do we need this initiative? Early in 2000, the Commission decided that the fixing of book prices across the German and Austrian border was incompatible with Community law. We accepted this ruling. Austria responded by enacting a law, Germany initially with a national contractual agreement, but even before this summer, a law on the fixing of book prices is to be enacted in the Federal Republic of Germany. What are we working towards? If Member States do not want to fix book prices, then we do not want to impose it on them. Each Member State is to be able to decide whether to accept this system or not. That is most important, but the national system of book price fixing, which the Commission accepts, are in fact jeopardised by the importing of books, by the practice of exporting and reimporting them and by Internet trading. As one can think of many ways of circumventing the law via these routes, Community law has to contain competition provisions to guarantee that the permissible national systems of book price fixing are not undermined. National rules are also jeopardised by commercial enterprises that also deal in books and unceasingly cause these national systems to be attacked by national and European courts of law in the hope that they will one day actually collapse. That is why there is a need for a directive to create a stable economic and legal framework for present and future national systems of book price fixing, without any associated obligation on those Member States that do not want such systems. Commissioner Monti, by the way, when I was having discussions with him about this, recommended precisely this approach. He was at that time responsible for these matters and said: ‘If we, the Commission, have decided, then we should think up a directive that, so to speak, gives this decision long-term durability in the future.’ What is at issue is respect for the Member States that have decided in favour of these systems. They do so for the sake of cultural diversity. Let me give just one example of this. In any one year, more titles are published in the Federal Republic of Germany than in the United States, so let nobody try to tell us that this cultural diversity could be maintained if the national systems of price fixing were to be abolished. That is the actual reason why the Commission has to ensure that we create this economic and legal framework to enable the Member States with these systems to retain them. That is what this proposal for a directive is about. It is not about making the fixing of book prices normative throughout the European Union. That is not at all what it is about; it is about safeguarding the existing directives. Apart from that, I have set out detailed reasons why the existence of these systems alongside each other can lead to distortions of competition and why this necessitates a legal basis for the European Union to take action. (Applause)

Political group: PSE