The Empty Chair: Why Is Europe’s Public Knowledge Sector Being Ghosted?
This week, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) hosts its major “Conference on Copyright,” bringing together policymakers and industry leaders to navigate our “Evolving Digital Landscape”. Such events are critical. They shape the rules that will govern knowledge, culture, and innovation in the AI era.
You would expect, then, that the “Testimonies from cultural and creative sectors in Europe” would be a broad and representative panel.
A draft version of the program, which we saw and took a screenshot of, promised just that. It listed the speakers who would offer testimony: “A journalist, a music composer, a fashion designer, a writer and a representative of a national library.”
A balanced panel, ready to discuss the impact of technology on their creative processes. But in the final program, a subtle but profound change has been made: the “representative of a national library” has vanished.
The final program, now public, lists the testimonies from: “A journalist, a music composer, a fashion designer, an actor and a writer”.
The empty chair where our public knowledge sector should have been is not just an oversight. It is a symptom of a deep and dangerous blind spot in European policymaking. It’s the physical manifestation of a persistent refusal to see our shared cultural heritage as a key stakeholder, reducing the entire copyright debate to a simplistic fight between Big Tech and “creatives”—a definition that apparently excludes the very people who steward our public access to knowledge.
The Scale of the Omission
Why does this one speaker slot matter? Because of what—and who—it represents.
When policymakers exclude “libraries,” they are not sidelining a niche, dusty sector. They are ignoring one of the largest and most vital public infrastructures in Europe.
- How many? There are over 70,000 public and research libraries in Europe, represented by bodies like IFLA, LIBER and EBLIDA.
- How many users? These institutions serve approximately 100 million registered users. In a 2016 report, the European Parliament noted that the EU’s 65,000 public libraries receive 100 million visitors annually.
- What do they do? They are not just book repositories. They are, for many, the “most local cultural infrastructure.” They are powerhouses of non-formal education, providing essential digital and media literacy skills to all ages.
The social and economic contribution is staggering. In the EU, public libraries help an estimated 250,000 people find a job every year. In Romania alone, librarians trained to provide digital access helped 100,000 farmers secure $187 million in EU subsidies. They are drivers of social integration and hubs for public access to technology.
They are, in short, the engine of public access, education, and digital inclusion. And they are at the absolute frontline of the copyright and AI debate. To exclude them from the conversation is to ignore the public interest itself.
An Echo Chamber, Rebuilt
This isn’t the first time. We saw a similar dynamic just two months ago at the Danish Presidency’s AI Conference. That event’s agenda was dominated by the entertainment industry and Big Tech, while lacking any representation for Europe’s vast research ecosystem, cultural heritage institutions, or civil society.
The EUIPO agenda, while different, repeats the same fundamental error. It reinforces the familiar, outdated narrative that pits Big Content against Big Tech.
Just look at the program. Session 3 gives voice to creators, such as authors and musicians. Session 4 on AI features developers and tech giants. The debate is framed as a negotiation between these incumbent commercial players, with regulators serving as mediators. This approach feels like fighting old battles, with the conversation dominated by players more focused on protecting existing market shares than on building an inclusive, innovation-friendly regulatory environment.
The Real-World Stakes: From Owners to Renters
Here is the devastating irony: the one group erased from the panel is perhaps the most affected by the intersection of AI and copyright.
Libraries and cultural heritage institutions are facing an existential crisis. As highlighted by the #ProtectOurFutureMemory campaign, they are being systematically transformed from owners of knowledge to mere renters.
Our public institutions are trapped in an unbalanced digital licensing system, beholden to a few, ultra-profitable scholarly publishers. As its 2025 annual report highlighted, the scientific arm of RELX (Elsevier) posted a 37% profit margin. To put that in perspective, Apple runs on 24% and Pfizer on 11%.
This market power is not abstract. It is used to impose contractual terms that stifle innovation and override public interest laws.
And here is the direct link to the EUIPO conference:
- For years, publishers have used contracts to override the EU’s legal exceptions for Text and Data Mining (TDM)—the rights granted to researchers to analyse content they lawfully access.
- Now, with the rise of AI, the situation has worsened. Since 2023, publishers have begun introducing broad contractual bans on using licensed content with any AI tools.
Think about the absurdity. The EUIPO is holding a “Conference on Copyright” to discuss AI, yet it has removed the one representative from the very institutions on the front lines—the ones who are being contractually blocked by rightsholders from using AI on content they have lawfully licensed.
How can you possibly build a “future-ready” copyright infrastructure when the largest public-facing infrastructure is not even in the room?
A Call for a Bigger Table
This unbalanced agenda is not an isolated incident. It reflects a policy-making process that is too often captured by the loudest and best-funded lobby groups.
The EU has a narrow window to get its AI and copyright policy right. If we are to build a policy that serves the public, we must listen to the public’s stewards.
The EUIPO and the European Commission should look beyond these curated industry events. They must actively seek out the perspectives of the EU’s own research communities. They must listen to our librarians.
An AI policy built in such an echo chamber risks protecting outdated models at the expense of future innovation. Europe’s 70,000 libraries are not the past. They are the future of public access, digital literacy, and equitable knowledge. They are the holders of our future memory. It is not too late to pull up a chair for them.
Written by Caroline De Cock, LL.M., Head of Research
