diff --git a/src/main/java/org/mapfish/print/servlet/MapPrinterServlet.java b/src/main/java/org/mapfish/print/servlet/MapPrinterServlet.java
index d4ceac0356..1daea7cf6f 100644
--- a/src/main/java/org/mapfish/print/servlet/MapPrinterServlet.java
+++ b/src/main/java/org/mapfish/print/servlet/MapPrinterServlet.java
@@ -26,9 +26,11 @@
 import java.io.FileOutputStream;
 import java.io.FileWriter;
 import java.io.IOException;
+import java.io.InputStreamReader;
 import java.io.OutputStream;
 import java.io.PrintWriter;
 import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;
+import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;
 import java.text.DateFormat;
 import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
 import java.util.Date;
@@ -255,7 +257,7 @@ protected String getSpecFromPostBody(HttpServletRequest httpServletRequest) thro
         if(httpServletRequest.getParameter("spec") != null) {
             return httpServletRequest.getParameter("spec");
         }
-        BufferedReader data = httpServletRequest.getReader();
+        BufferedReader data = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(httpServletRequest.getInputStream(), StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
         try {
             StringBuilder spec = new StringBuilder();
             String cur;