Neelie Kroes

The European Union, which controls one of the world’s largest science budgets, said on Tuesday it would give free access to all research funded by European taxpayers, in a move that could hit the profits of scientific publishers such as Reed Elsevier, Wiley and Springer.

Plans by the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, to release for free and to a wider audience articles usually held by expensive academic journals would benefit innovation, but would force publishers, which currently generate about $8bn in revenues, to revolutionise their business models, analysts said.

The chiefs of Europe's publishing houses will meet today (26th June) in Brussels at a round-table discussion on growing the e-book market set to emphasise the need for e-books to be taxed at the same rate as physical books. UK representatives such as Penguin chief executive John Makinson and Hachette commercial director Richard Kitson will join publishers including Riccardo Cavallero of Mondadori, Stefano Mauri of Mauri Spagna and Rudiger Salat of Holtzbrink Verlagsgruppe at this morning's discussion, hosted by the Federation of European Publishers and the European Booksellers Federation. Ahead of the event, the FEP and the EBF have

Across most of Europe, e-books are taxed at full national value-added rates, which reach 25 percent in Sweden, Denmark, Hungary and other countries. Printed books, benefiting from an industry lobby, are taxed at a fraction of the full rates — and not at all in Britain.

It seems, Mr. Seaman said, that the value-added tax gap “discourages traditional publishers from innovating by effectively subsidizing them not to.”