The new information and knowledge society envisaged for the EU can only benefit from the rich cognitive and aesthetic environment offered by the literatures of Europe. The importance of advancing an economic rationale lies not only in changed economic circumstances but in the necessity to avoid the marginalisation of literature, and cultural policy more generally, in the EU through a combination of misguided market pragmatism and self-congratulatory aesthetic sanctimoniousness. The place of translation in the marketplace warns of the threats of clonialism. Thus, for Europe, the promotion of distinctness as a form of relatedness can function as a viable alternative to the clonialist regime of autistic self-replication. The author concludes these arguments by reminding the reader that among other things, literature is an enormous cultural industry for the present Europe. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.