Many supporters of Google's U.S. book digitization project in Europe, including some Commission officials and public libraries, want the E.U. to strike a similar deal to the U.S. settlement.

"Europe should definitely move in the same direction," said Sylvia Van Peteghem, director of the Ghent University Library. Her library is one of seven prestigious European libraries already cooperating with Google to digitize copies of books in their collection for which the copyright has expired.

In a joint statement with Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, Reding said Monday that "digitisation of books is a task of Herculean proportions which the public sector needs to guide, but where it also needs private-sector support."

The commissioners warned: "If we are too slow to go digital, Europe's culture could suffer in the future."

However, simply duplicating the settlement on this side fo the Atlantic is impossible, partly because European laws don't permit the sorts of class actions that the U.S. publishers set up to challenge Google, before they reached their agreement.