Max Andersson, rapporteur. – Mr President, there are 285 million blind and visually impaired people in the world. Most of them have very little access to books that they can read. Today we can take a major step to change that. Today’s debate is about the implementation of the Marrakech Treaty. This is a Treaty that the Greens, and indeed the whole European Parliament, have been fighting for for years. It creates a copyright exemption in international copyright law for the benefit of blind and visually impaired people so that they can have greater access to books. That is a great thing.

The Marrakech Treaty is an international WIPO treaty, but 30 countries have already joined. What problems does it solve? Today, when you make a copy of a book into a format that blind people can read by, for example, reading it into a computer, you are not allowed to send that book across a border, because of copyright law. The Marrakech Treaty changes that by removing those barriers which prevent libraries and organisations for the blind from sharing books across borders. Why is this important? Most of the 285 million blind and visually impaired people in the world live in countries where there are very few books made accessible in a format that they can read. Most of the books that have been made accessible are in rich countries such as EU countries. By removing the borders, the barriers that prevent the sharing of books, we make books available across the world and we take a major step towards giving blind people much better access to books.

This will be of benefit in EU countries, but the vast improvement will be in countries in Latin America and then Africa and other places where many people speak a European language. This will enable the sharing of books from one country to another and create much better access.

So why has this not been done before? Well, parts of the publishing industry were worried that this copyright exemption might cost them money, so there has been significant lobbying pressure, and the Council was for a very long time unable to decide how to proceed, but now we have finally got there. As Parliament’s negotiator, I am very glad that we have reached a compromise that enables the removal of barriers to the sharing of books across countries.

For many of us, reading books is one of the most important things that we do, and blind people in the world can now have greater access to books. This will make it easier to find a new favourite book.

I would like to thank all the people who have been working for this and I am calling on the European Parliament to vote in favour of the implementation of the Marrakech Treaty because blind people deserve better access to books.