home . about the EPC . press centre . fact sheets . issues . members' area . links

Welcome to the EPC website

A message from EPC Chairman Francisco Balsemão

Since 1991, the European Publishers Council (EPC) has worked tirelessly to uphold the fundamental freedoms of a free and competitive media on behalf of our members, our readers and audiences and to promote diversity and democracy in an enlarged European Union.

The EPC is a high level group of Chairmen and CEOs of leading European media corporations actively involved in multimedia markets spanning newspaper, magazine, book, journal, internet and online database publishers. Many EPC members also have significant interests in commercial television and radio. Click here for our list of members: http://www.epceurope.org/about/ourmembers.shtml.

Since our formation, we have played an active part in the remarkable development of the Information Society: a new and ever-changing new media landscape. We have worked with legislators to ensure the regulatory environment has been conducive to the continued development of both traditional and new media.

Notably, we have contributed to legislative developments:

• By encouraging the development of the media, old and new, with the lightest of regulatory frameworks so that they can flourish without the outdated legal constraints considered necessary at a time of spectrum scarcity.
• By promoting the establishment of self regulatory codes for editorial and advertising content and of mechanisms for the public to seek speedy and effective redress where appropriate.
• By ensuring access for news reporters and their cameras to events and information which serve the public interest.
• By promoting competition amongst those media without the publicly funded media using their licence income or subsidy from government to unfair competitive advantage.
• By safeguarding the copyright of publishers content and authors' work through balanced legal protections and business-led solutions such as ACAP (www.the-acap.org) to ensure the future of high quality content.
• By exempting the written word from taxation (whether on paper, on storage medium or on screen), thus avoiding unwarranted barriers to literacy which is so vital at work and at leisure.
• By recognizing that advertising performs an essential role in providing consumers with information about goods and services and so guarantees competition in a free market economy.
• By securing the freedom of commercial communication so that advertising income, crucial to media businesses, is not jeopardized by intrusive legislation.
• By empowering, where redress at law is sought, a citizen to use the statutes of the country of origin of the medium in question and so ensure practical remedy across national boundaries.
• By promoting security of commerce on the internet and so encouraging consumer confidence.
• By adhering to proper standards of use of databases and personal information about consumers.
• By acting to maintain the freedom of the internet from unnecessary or intrusive regulation.
• By publicising the activities of the European Commission and Parliament, and the benefits of a European Internal Market so that the public are informed about the institutions which govern them.

In this ever-changing media landscape, we are proud to represent the business interests of Europe's leading media companies and proud to have earned the respect of leading regulators and legislators in the European Union.