Almost a third of European 15-year-olds now struggle to understand basic texts. In response, the European Commission has launched the European Literacy Coalition, aiming to fix deep-seated learning gaps across the continent before reading for pleasure disappears entirely.
Can a new alliance created by officials in Brussels actually make young people pick up a book? It sounds like the start of an old bureaucratic joke. Yet the quiet emergency behind this move is real.
On 22–23 September 2026, the European Commission formally launched the European Literacy Coalition in Brussels. The foundation of this initiative is the newly published Warsaw Memorandum, drafted during a workshop held in Poland earlier in May.
Behind all the usual policy language sits a startling statistic: according to recent OECD PISA results, 31.3% of 15-year-olds in the European Union struggle to understand basic texts.
That is nearly one in three teenagers unable to follow straightforward written arguments, while top performers make up barely 4.8%. Add to this more than one in four adults with low literacy proficiency, and the picture looks grim.
Why Brussels is stepping into our reading lives
For a long time, the dominant narrative around struggling readers was simple: children spend excessive hours glued to smartphones and short videos, so their attention spans disappear.
While reports on excessive screen time among European teenagers certainly point out genuine friction between notification algorithms and deep concentration, the problem goes much deeper than just telling teens to put down their phones.
The Warsaw Memorandum argues that reading taught strictly as an exam metric ceases to bring any joy. Instead of treating reading as a school compliance exercise, the new alliance wants to address reading across an entire lifespan.
The Coalition plans to connect schools, publishers, researchers, and local public bodies to treat literacy as an ongoing public good rather than a short-lived project. It also calls on technology developers to take accountability – proposing ideas such as “literacy by design” within future revisions of the AI Act and Digital Services Act, so algorithmic feeds stop chipping away at sustained attention.
The local heroes holding the ecosystem together
If you look closely at the founding text, one thing stands out: the plan relies heavily on local cultural hubs. And who runs those? Librarians.
Public and school libraries are recognised as the anchor institutions of any literate society. We know that over 170,000 librarians are holding European public life together, often operating on shoestring budgets and managing community needs well outside their job descriptions.
The Warsaw Memorandum explicitly calls for giving librarians formal roles in pedagogical teams, structured continuing training, and proper career pathways across Europe. It also pushes for free library access across the EU, including specialised audio services and book-gifting schemes right from early childhood.
Because if a child does not experience bedtime stories or discover the pleasure of an accessible community bookspace by age six, catching up later becomes an uphill battle.
Can a European coalition fix reading habits?
Declarations and working groups cannot replace a quiet afternoon with a good story. But what this initiative gets right is rejecting the unhelpful label of the “non-reader.”
People already engage with language daily across print, screens, audiobooks, and graphic novels. The key is giving people the time, quiet, and infrastructure to build comprehension without turning it into a chore.
Whether the European Literacy Coalition manages to shift national educational budgets remains to be seen. But acknowledging that almost a third of our youth cannot comfortably read an everyday article is at least an honest, necessary place to start.
