As independent, innovative, forward looking publishers, we seek to maintain an open and competitive regulatory environment that supports our businesses. We facilitate dialogue with European institutions to ensure a level playing field for our members, lower barriers to market entry, and diversity and pluralism in the media industry.

• We oppose the creation of EU-wide neighbouring rights for press publishers in Article 15 (formerly Article 11) of the Copyright Directive. We firmly believe this new right would have a negative impact on news publishing. It would make it harder for smaller publishers to reach new audiences. New barriers to entry would emerge for innovative players such as ourselves. Our readers would be prevented from engaging with our stories online. This would result in less news sources available, less innovation and a worse consumer experience.
• We oppose the restriction on freedom of expression, critical to publishers, journalists and bloggers in Article 17 (formerly Article 13) of the Copyright Directive. The proposed Directive means that blogs, news portals and news sites and apps directly liable for copyright violations, even unintentional, committed by users uploading comments or stories. Currently, under the E-Commerce Directive (ECD) online news publishers are  only liable if they fail to remove infringing content as soon as they receive notice. The new rules would harm digital media, creating broad new liabilities for the use of user generated content, comment sections or linking to sources in an article.
• We support opening the benefit of reduced VAT rates for e-publications such as news websites, portals and apps. Currently digital publications must apply the full  VAT rate (15% or more) while the same publication in a tangible format can apply a reduced VAT rate. This harms publishers who rely on developing digital business models for their future.
• We oppose proposals to regulate news in the same way as television under the review of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive.