Following last week’s comments from the European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, that next year the Commission would propose a VAT reform to reduce the rate on ebooks and digital newspapers and bring it into line with printed media, Amazon has the following statement:

"Amazon welcomes the announcement from the European Commission’s president, Jean-Claude Juncker, that a lower VAT rate for digital books will be proposed next year. Like many of our customers, we feel strongly that books in any format should be subject to the same reduced VAT rate – a book is a book and its cultural and educational significance stem from the content of the author’s work, not its format."

You can find the full text of President Juncker’s speech in German and a summary in English here.