Your Excellency, esteemed Mr. President Nicușor-Daniel DAN,
Esteemed Mr. Prime Minister-designate, Ilie Gavril BOLOJAN,

The Romanian Publishers Association respectfully draws your attention to the fact that the fiscal measures that lead to the increase in the price of books do not solve even a fraction of a percent of the state budget deficit, which, in turn, cannot be attributed to written culture in any way. The increase in the price of books will only accentuate the decrease in cultural consumption, which we have been observing for several years, and will directly contribute to the amplification of functional illiteracy, with increasingly severe effects on the labor force in the Romanian economy and, in general, on the human resources of our country.

Esteemed Mr. President, esteemed Mr. Prime Minister-designate,
The year 2025 has every chance of becoming the darkest in the entire history of written culture since 1989. You are the ones who can mitigate this shock, which is already being felt.

While, at the European level, our colleagues are debating how to curb copyright infringement through the abusive commercial exploitation of artificial intelligence, Romania is several decades behind, the main culprit being the state itself, which does not ensure compliance with the laws in force, mainly Law 8/1996, on copyright and related rights, and Law 304/2002, on libraries, to name just the most important and outdated in non-application.

We are probably the only industry in imminent danger of suddenly losing about 10% of the distribution points in the country. Added to this are the measures to increase taxation that will be implemented soon and which will have a disastrous impact on the cultural consumption habits of Romanians.

Some explanations for the impending catastrophe of the book market: Diverta, the second largest distributor in physical book retail, with 21 bookstores, is preparing for bankruptcy (after two more insolvencies in a decade); Elefant.ro, once the largest online book retailer, is struggling to return to business after last year's insolvency; independent bookstores are closing one after another due to economic pressure, the most recent being the beautiful "La Două Bufnițe" bookstore in Timișoara. In addition, we recall the equally alarming disappearance of public libraries, over 8,300 units having closed since 1990 until the end of last year.

AER thus proposes to the Government to seriously assume its mission of protecting national culture and to provide the necessary funds for libraries to acquire at least 50 new books per 1,000 inhabitants, the minimum threshold established by the Library Law since 2002.

AER launched, on February 15, 2023, the Pact for Reading, a strategy to support written culture as a fundamental element of national identity and social cohesion, which it submitted to the Presidential Administration and the Government of Romania. We resume the desiderata from this document:
– a national campaign to promote reading, supported by the state;
– resuming the program of 100 euros annually granted to teachers for the purchase of books and extending this program to other social categories: pupils, students, doctors, etc.;
– supporting book deliveries by post/courier by compensating 50% of the costs, according to the Written Culture Law, no. 186/2003.

We also recall that the Pre-University Education Law, no. 198/2023, provides in article 83 for the establishment of two national programs: “Cultural Voucher for Students” and “A Book for Everyone”, aimed at stopping the advance of functional illiteracy. We have been waiting for the operationalization of these national programs for two years now.

The legislation regulating the field of written culture, although positive overall, is systematically overlooked: the Romanian state simply does not apply it. For compliance, the National Association of Public Libraries in Romania calculated as early as 2022 that compliance by the state with the minimum obligation of purchases in libraries would bring about 80 million euros to the market annually, that is, it would double the book market, for the direct benefit of the public.

Considering all of the above, we express our confidence that you will take the necessary steps so that the recovery of the budget deficit does not entail an additional burden in terms of the price of books, in a country ranked last in the European Union in terms of per capita book consumption.

Board of Directors of the Romanian Publishers Association