EWC POSITION PAPER
PRESS RELEASE One Year of Crisis: The Winter of our Discontent
9 November 2021: EUPL 2021 AWARD CEREMONY
To the Members of the European Parliament DROI Subcommittee on Human Rights
Forced liquidation: The European Writers’ Council stands with its member, the Union of Belarusian Writers
Belarus: Radical crackdown against the Free Word
EWC demands support for writers, translators and cultural workers fleeing Belarus
The EWC condemns the attacks of the dictatorial Lukashenko regime on its member, the Union of Belarusian Writers, as well as on the writers’ organisation PEN Belarus in Minsk
Playing off the right to education and culture, and the authors’ right against each other harms a democracy
The EWC Annual General Assembly 2021 was successfully held online – new EWC Board elected
Authors’ Group press statement on the transposition of the 2019 EU Copyright Directive.
EUROPEAN UNION PRIZE FOR LITERATURE ANNOUNCES THE 2021 LAUREATES!
EUROPEAN WRITERS’ COUNCIL (EWC )
Fédération des associations européennes d’écrivains (FAEE – AISBL)
The European Writers’ Council represents 160,000 professional writers and translators in the book and text sector in all genres, from all over Europe.
The European Writers’ Council is the federation of 46 national organisations of professional writers and translators in 30 countries including the EU, as well as Belarus, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey and Montenegro, altogether writing in 32 languages.
EWC’s member associations represent 160,000 individual authors in the book and text sector in all genres.
The EWC defends the professional interests of its members in economic, legal and political contexts, their right to remuneration and compensation for their works, their relevance in cultural and social policy, freedom of expression, freedom of association, and the importance of lesser spoken and written languages.
The EWC champions the diversity of literatures while raising awareness for both the role of authors in society and the need to have their social, moral and economic rights respected in the digital age.
The EWC promotes the need for a wider access to culture, including the production of special formats for the visually impaired persons of the world.
The EWC remains determined to raise and publicly present the commitment of professional writers and translators to shaping the profile of Europe through individual creativity within the diversity of expressions in the rich variety of living European languages.
The EWC is part of the consortium implementing the European Union Prize for Literature, in collaboration with the European Commission.
The EWC-EWC/FAEE aisle’s official aims and mission are to represent the professional interests of the creators of literature: poetry, fiction and non-fiction, juvenile and children’s literature, drama, screenplay, core texts for audiovisual works and translation of all forms of literary works, while contributing to the debate on the role of authors, culture and cultural policy in Europe and the world; to facilitate trans-European cultural & literary co-operation,and to advocate for the literatures of Europe, cultural and linguistic diversity, and also to promote the writers’ contribution to culture, including in the lesser known languages.
Our mission comprises three main objectives/domains within the European context:
- Authors’ Rights, including Copyright
- Cultural Policy
- Cultural Exchange
The EWC is legally represented by the Executive Board: the President and up to two Vice-Presidents, plus up to four regular board members. These professional writers act in an honorary capacity and are elected or re-elected by the EWC Assembly for the term of two years.
The delegates of each organisation gather each year in a European city and participate in the Annual General Assembly, which is the main governing body.
The duty of running the day-to-day business and of implementing the policies and work programme has been assigned to the Secretary-General who is our legal representative and spokesperson, working in close contact with the Board whose members live in seven different countries of Europe.
The size and scope of this continuous work in co-operation with other European authors’ organisations, stakeholders in the book and publishing chain, collective management organisations (CMOs), the European Parliament, and the European Commission to name just a few, depends on the financial resources of the EWC: These are scarce, as with many independent non-profit authors’ organisations.
The EWC is currently funded by the annual membership fees and donations.
The new elected Board of the European Writers’ Council (EWC) sets its agenda: to strengthen the moral and economic rights of authors and keeping the diversity of literature alive, the most powerful and independent instrument of democracy.
Nina George, international bestselling novelist from Germany, has been elected as President of the EWC at its general assembly 2019 in Riga, Latvia. The Vice-President is Daniel Cristea-Enache (Romania), Director of Communications at the Writers’ Union of Romania and Associate Professor in the Department of Literary Studies at the University of Bucharest. The new elected board includes Poet Ružica Cindori, Secretary General of the Croatian Writers’ Association, Non-fiction-writer Markku Löytönen, Professor of human geography at the University of Helsinki (Finland), and Alena Makouskaya, Director of the Civil society organization “Homeland”, and member of the Secretariat of the Union of the Belarusian Writers.
The new EWC Board sets its agenda on three major tasks:
✪ Protecting the authors’ moral and economic rights in the digital era
✪ Promoting the values of Literature, to transfer knowledge, independent opinions and cultural narratives not only to the next generations
✪ Defending the freedom of expression, to stand for the values of a democratic, pluralistic and diverse Europe
