WHAT PUBLISHERS ARE SAYING

Mark Dekan

CEO, Ringier Axel Springer, Switzerland

"The internet economy is a low cost economy where there are virtually no barriers to entry, whereas quality journalism is a high cost business. Quality content is expensive.. Professional journalists need to be paid, trained, resourced and legally protected by their publishers. It is therefore important that a press publishers` right is introduced at European level without delay."

"The publishers' right will enable us to secure our heavy investments in digital paid content and in this way contribute to a sustainable future for our media brands."

Xavier Bouckaert

CEO, Roularta Media Group, Belgium

“Whoever wants to live in a functional and democratic Europe in the digital age has to make a strong contribution to the protection of expensive quality content.”

Gerald Grünberger

Managing Director, VÖZ, Austria

Speaking to Politico shortly after the Belgian terrorist attacks in March: “ Everybody knows: journalism is free and independent in this house, and it’s holy to us,” he said. “I mean, I’m religious about it.” Yet it’s at moments like these that news organizations prove their true value — gathering the facts in the most challenging and confusing of circumstances, sorting the truth from the noise, helping people make sense of the senseless…This is when as a publisher and CEO of a media company you feel how important media are to society.”

Christian Van Thillo

CEO, De Persgroep, Belgium

“Time is money. Publishers must be able to protect their investment. The sooner, the better.“

Herbert Scheiblauer

CEO, Gewinn Verlag, Austria

"Europe needs a copyright environment that ensures long-term survival and prosperity of a plural and diverse magazine publishing industry.“

Horst Pirker

CEO, Verlagsgruppe News, Austria

Francisco Pinto Balsemão

Chairman, Impresa, Portugal

"I have known life under a dictatorship. The Portuguese press suffered 40 years of censorship. The gallery proofs had to be sent to the censors and every day a part of what we had written was not authorized to be published in our newspapers.

At my media company, Impresa, in Portugal, our journalists' independence from the business is the 'Holy Grail'. We train them, pay them, provide them with legal protection, produce and distribute their work on multiple platforms then allow them to get on and do the essential job of informing and entertaining our readers and broadcast audiences without interference."

Carlo Perrone

CEO, Italiana Editrice S.p.A., Italy

"The Commission’s initiative to create a right for press publishers at EU level represents an historical and significant step. This issue has to be solved as part of the EU Copyright legislation as it is one of the key-internal market instrument protecting the whole culture and creative sector in Europe. Such copyright protection should therefore apply to the press publishing sector in order to ensure legal certainty on a European wide basis. "

Angela Mills Wade

Executive Director, EPC, Belgium

"The press publishers are doing something that is essential to protect because breaking news or in-depth investigative reports, sports coverage or feature writing is not just popular to read and share across social media, but expensive and risky to produce. A press publishers right will provide legal certainty for the benefit of press publishers large and small, making it clear that publishers’ content cannot be copied or reused for commercial benefit without their permission, putting press publishers on a par with other EU related right holders."