A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR A NEW POLICYMAKING FOR THE EUROPEAN PUBLISHING INDUSTRY

• From the perspective of supply: competition policy that really favours pluralism.
• The implementation guidelines would referred to a simple, holistic and evaluated policies.

The three modest proposals are the result of the work carried out in the on-line Readmagine’s 2020 edition. Based on the three documents prepared by Fundación GSR a meeting was held on November 16 with the participation of some of the experts gathered during Readmagine 21.

The three working groups aimed to build brief proposals on:

Policy to promote reading in Europe (coordinated by Miha Kovač), European policy to support the book industry (coordinated by Enrico Turrin) and Business models for the book (coordinated by José Manuel Anta).

In this video you can follow the presentations corresponding to the proposals for  policymaking for the European publishing industry.

The group of experts was integrated by:

• Piero Attanasio (AIE, Italy)
• Jörg Engelstädter (Canon, Germany)
• Kristenn Einnersson (WEF, Norway)
• Simone Lippold (Börsenverein, Germany)
• Rapporteur: Enrico Turrin (FEP, Europe)

As rapporteur of the new policymaking for the European publishing industry, Enrico Turrin (Deputy Director of the European Federation of Publishers) presented an appealing conceptual framework with four dimensions:

• Demand
• Supply
• Funding
• Regulation

The group of experts evaluated this conceptual framework from the perspective of the impact of each of the ideas and the feasibility that the measures would imply. As a result of this assessment the presentation by Turrin was focused on eleven ideas with the highest degree on each of the criteria (being the highest 4).

The first area of interest was to focus on funding for the demand side, referring to all sorts of measures the European governments could do to promote demand for books from readers (F = Feasibility / I= Impact):

1. Support for demand (book vouchers). F 4 / I 4
2. Targeted literacy and reading promotion policies. F 3 / I 4
3. Investing in education, socioeconomic welfare, SDGs. F 2 / I 4
4. Support innovation: neutral, infrastructural, software. F 3 / I 4
5. Support stakeholders in key positions: networks, matching, multipliers, incubators, accelerators. F 2 / I 4

The second bunch of ideas was linked to the regulation for supply (and demand) side

6. Back to basics: copyright and freedom to publish (also in education) as a prerequisite. F 2 / I 4
7. A competition policy that really favours pluralism. F 1 / I 4

Those proposals were accompanied by a few guiding principles for implementation:

8. Keep it clear, if not simple. F 3 / I 3
9. Survey and measure the needs and impact. F 2, I 3
10. Take a holistic approach. F 1, I 4
11. Let the data flow. F 1, I 3

In this video you can follow the presentations corresponding to each of the proposals.

Enrico Turrin got a degree in Economics at the University Luigi Bocconi in Milan in 2000 and a master’s degree in International Affairs at the Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI), Milan, in 2001. After internships at the Italian Embassy in Madrid and at the United Nation’s Global Programme against Money Laundering in Vienna, in 2002 he became Project Manager in the Training Area at ISPI and lecturer of International Organisations. From 2005 to 2008 he worked as an external expert and lecturer for ISPI and for a project by the Italian Foreign Ministry in the field of Cooperation. In 2008 he was hired as an economist by FEP, where he has been involved in the ARROW, ARROW plus, TISP and Ambrosia projects, and is currently working in the Aldus network and in the ASAP project. He is Deputy Director of FEP since 2012.