The Netherlands in the European Community: A Cultural Area of Modest Proportions with a Few Large Publishing Companies with International Interests

Abstract

People in the Netherlands are wondering how European economic integration in 1992 can best be reconciled with preservation of a national cultural identity. In almost all European countries, sales of books, certainly of popular books, are in dramatic decline, at the rate of one million copies per year in the Netherlands and at a similar rate in other countries. On average, sales of books in terms of copies fell by 40 percent between 1970 and 1985. There have also been alarming changes in reading behavior. In the Netherlands people now read 30 minutes a week less than they did in 1975. The prospects of European integration appear far rosier for those Dutch publishers with international interests. They have traditionally been geared up to a world market for a great many years. Although the Dutch education system is purely national in orientation at present, publishers can expect the European Commission to try increasingly to stamp a European impression on education.