Max Andersson, rapporteur. – Mr President, when I was appointed rapporteur for the Greens for the ratification of the Marrakech Treaty nearly three and half years ago, I was told that this would be an easy file and that it would be over quickly. Well, we were overly optimistic and I fear that we might have underestimated the degree of resistance that certain lobby interests would be able to push for and try to delay the ratification of the Marrakech Treaty.

But we overcame this resistance, and this is because many people – the shadows and many other MEPs present and not present in Parliament right now – did a lot of work in order to improve the access of blind people to books that they can read. We did it, and I also would like to thank the Commission for its sterling work on this issue and of course I would like to thank the Estonian Presidency and the Maltese Presidency for all the good things that they also did in order to make this a reality.

It has been very encouraging to hear this debate and all the speeches and I am quite confident that tomorrow we will vote to ratify the Marrakech Treaty so that blind people and visually impaired people and people with other reading disabilities will get a lot better access to books that they can read.