The program for the meeting included reports from the ASEAN+ and African EPFs by the Chairs of these two groups, Siva Sothinathan and Samuel Kolawole respectively; as well as an in-depth description of the Spanish educational publishing market by José Manuel Anta and Santiago Romero from the EPF’s Spanish members. Spokespeople for the French educational publishers, Camille Labat and Agnès Botrel, spoke about their ongoing battle with the government of the Île de France region, which is trying to spend taxpayers’ money to produce textbooks that will unfairly compete with those of professional publishers. Quite apart from questions of quality, such a move is of grave concern because of government control of students’ reading. A similar concern was heard from Slovenia, where government interference with the curricula and educational publishing procedures is a profound threat to local standards.
Finally, there was some good news from the UK where the Publishers Association has secured a favourable decision from the High Court in the terms of its longstanding Judicial Review of the government’s Oak National Academy initiative. In a separate decision, the PA also welcomed a government confirmation that a proposed copyright exception for AI with rightsholder opt-out is no longer the government’s preferred option, although the government’s next steps remain unclear.
The next meeting of the EPF will be in Istanbul, Türkiye, on 9 June. An agenda and further details will be circulated soon. Please contact the Secretariat if you are interested in attending.