Why talk to the EPC?
Our Experience
Since 1991, the EPC has lobbied on over 160 different legislative and other proposals and directives directly or indirectly affecting the day-to-day business of the media industry – from 16 different European Commission departments, four Commission Presidents and over 20 Commissioners and their cabinets, and more than 30 European Parliamentary committees over the four terms.
Our Knowledge And Expertise
When talking to the EPC, legislators have access to the most senior executives and decision-makers of Europe’s major media companies for feedback or information on the real or potential impact of proposed legislation.
Our Innovation
Via the EPC, legislators have immediate access to the most progressive thinking on new industry developments and innovation.
To sustain and grow Europe’s media economy in print, in broadcast and online
To inform, educate, entertain and communicate with Europe’s consumers
To maintain a diverse media as rich and varied as its consumers
To protect freedom of speech and democracy in the European Union
The EPC achieves its goals through the following measures:
- 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development of the media, old and new, with the lightest of regulatory frameworks so that they can flourish without the outdated legal constraints considered necessary at a time of spectrum scarcity.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 Public Service media using their licence income or subsidy from government to unfair competitive advantage.
- By safeguarding the copyright of publishers' content and authors’ work and by commissioning high quality content.
- By seeking to secure for publishers, when they purchase that content, practical contracts that will work across all media.
- 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 use of databases and information about consumers.
- By acting to maintain the freedom of the internet from unnecessary or intrusive regulation.
- By publicizing the activities of the European Commission and Parliament, and the working of the Internal Market so that the public are informed about the institutions which govern them.
