A Digital Europe

Speech Viviane Reding EU Commissioner for Telecoms and Media Digital Europe – Europe's Fast Track to Economic Recovery The Ludwig Erhard Lecture 2009 Lisbon Council, Brussels, 9 July 2009

"If we do not, very quickly, make it easier and more consumer-friendly to access digital content, we could lose a whole generation as supporters of artistic creation and legal use of digital services. Economically, socially, and culturally, this would be a tragedy. It will therefore be my key priority to work, in cooperation with other Commissioners, on a simple, consumer-friendly legal framework for accessing digital content in Europe's single market, while ensuring at the same time fair remuneration of creators. Digital Europe can only be built with content creators on board; and with the generation of digital natives as interested users and innovative consumers. I will give you two examples of what Europe could do concretely for this:

− First of all, we could facilitate the licensing of intellectual property rights for online services covering the territory of all 27 EU Member States (...) - Second example: We should create a modern set of European rules that encourage the digitisation of books (...) if we do not reform our European copyright rules on orphan works and libraries swiftly, digitisation and the development of attractive content offers will not take place in Europe, but on the other side of the Atlantic."

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