Culture

BACKGROUND
II - How it works today
III - Main challenges ahead

In the European Union, 4.2 million people work in the area of culture, i.e. 2.5% of the total working population. More than 50% of these people are employed in the cultural industries (broadcasting, cinema, CDs and books). On average, an EU15 household spends 4.5% of its budget on culture each year.

For Europe, in a context of globalization, the cultural and audiovisual sectors encompass three issues: through their societal dimension, they contribute to the emergence of a pluralistic and extremely diverse European identity; through their economic dimension, in a context of developing services, tourism and new technologies, they are factors of competitiveness and growth for the European economy and job pools; and lastly, through their political dimension, they are sources of Europe’s influence and that of its Member States in the world.

2 - Legal bases

The European Union has progressively been acquiring a cultural and audiovisual policy. In the absence of explicit jurisdiction until the Maastricht Treaty, this sector was first tackled mainly from the angle of its contribution to the development of the internal market: in the mid-1980s, in view of the development of satellite broadcasting, the European Commission presented a Green Paper on the development of the common market for broadcasting, setting off a debate that was to result in the adoption, on 3 October 1989, of the “Television Without Frontiers” Directive (TVWF). A certain number of Member States, including France, with the organization in 1989 of the “European Audiovisual Conclave”, and its statements in favour of the “cultural exception” when trade agreements for services were entered into in 1993-1994, were then expected to play a key role in the affirmation of this dimension of the common policies. Accordingly, substantial Community legislation with implications in the cultural and audiovisual field, particularly in relation to the internal market, competition and international trade, was established progressively. This legislation is clarified and supplemented by the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Communities.

The Maastricht Treaty explicitly extended the EU’s sphere of responsibility to include culture: indeed, it introduced a new “Culture” chapter (Title XII, Art. 151) and, in its chapter on “Principles”, stipulated that the EU should contribute to “education and training of quality and to the flowering of the cultures of the Member States” (Art. 3q). Within this new area of responsibility, the EU will take action only if the objectives envisaged cannot be achieved sufficiently by the Member States (Art. 5). Community action is therefore not a substitute for action by the Member States, but rather supplements it, in order to encourage cultural cooperation. The “Culture” chapter of the Treaty also stipulates that “the Community shall take cultural aspects into account in its action under other provisions of this Treaty, in particular in order to respect and promote the diversity of its cultures” (paragraph 4 of Art. 151).

Other sources of Community law in the area of culture and audiovisual media are today primarily Article 49 of the TEC, relating to the freedom to provide services, and Article 157, relating to industry, two areas in which, unlike Article 151, only a qualified majority is needed, as well as the external agreements concluded by the European Union with non-member countries or international organizations, which often include a cultural component, create a link with the Member States and are an integral part of Community legal order. Finally, Article 22 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights stipulates that “the Union shall respect cultural, religious and linguistic diversity”.

Today, the European Union cultural and audiovisual policy pursues three objectives: promoting creation in its diversity, contributing to the economic development of these sectors, and encouraging worldwide cultural dialogue. This policy has recourse to legal and financial instruments.

1 - Legal instruments

The cultural and audiovisual sectors are more or less directly concerned by a certain number of Community laws founded on the major principles of the Treaty (free movement of workers, freedom of establishment, etc.) or relating to taxation, specifically VAT harmonization. However, the Union intervenes most particularly in two areas: television and intellectual property.

Accordingly, the “Television Without Frontiers” Directive (TVWF) is the foundation for national television-related regulations. It aims to achieve two objectives: to create a common market for television broadcasting and to encourage the development of the programming industry in the Member States. To this end, it coordinates national laws in a certain number of fields: identification of Member State jurisdiction, production and broadcasting quotas for European works, protection of minors and public order, broadcasting of major events, rules on advertising, tele-shopping and sponsorship, and right of reply. Adopted in 1989, the TVWF Directive was revised, which led to the adoption of a modified directive on 30 June 1997. The European Union also intervened, through a 1998 directive, in the area of conditional access services.

Community intervention in the area of literary and artistic property is also significant. Accordingly, the European Union has established a high degree of copyright and neighbouring rights protection with regard to the term of protection, rental and lending rights, and droit de suite of an original work. Taking into account the evolution of media and the development of the information society, it has intervened in the area of computer programmes, cable and satellite broadcasting, databases and even conditional access services. Moreover, a 2001 directive ensures the protection of copyright and neighbouring rights in the information society, specifically with regard to reproduction and distribution of works.

2 - Financial instruments

Through three programmes - Culture 2000 (236M euros from 2000 to 2006) and Media Plus and Media Training (more than 500M euros from 2001 to 2006) - the Union earmarks approximately 130M euros each year for the cultural and audiovisual sectors, i.e. 0.12% of its budget and 28 cents per euro per year and per capita.

Culture 2000. Instituted for the first time in 2000, the Culture 2000 programme (which covers the period 2000-2006) has a broad objective: to develop a common cultural area and to promote the cultural diversity of the EU in the areas of the living arts, visual arts, heritage, literature, books, reading and literary translation. Priorities are set each year: the living arts in 2003, heritage in 2004, etc. Thirty countries are eligible to receive funding from the Culture 2000programme: the 25 EU Member States, as well as Romania, Bulgaria, and the three EEA/EFTA countries (Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein). Five percent of the programme is earmarked for operations with non-member countries. In order to be eligible, projects must provide for national contributions of a least 5% of the budget and involve three countries (annual project) or five countries (multi-year project.

Media Plus was adopted in December 2000, for a five-year period, later extended until the end of 2006. It supports the following actions:

· development (support for writing and preproduction of projects);

· distribution (selective support for distribution, automatic support for distribution, support for theatres - Europa-Cinemas network, support for video/DVD distribution, support for exporters, etc.). This component is the core of the MEDIA programme;

· promotion (support for the presence of companies and films at festivals and in markets);

· support for pilot projects, using new technologies (digital cinema, commercial film databank, video on demand, etc.).

The programme has 27 members (the 25 European Union Member States, and Iceland and Norway, from the EEA).

- Media Training, also adopted in 2000, supports training actions for professionals in the fields of writing, financial and commercial management, and new technologies applied to production and distribution. This programme aims to provide professionals in the European audiovisual programming industry, primarily through ongoing professional training, with the skills they need to be able to take full advantage of the European and international dimension of the market and the use of new technologies.

Other programmes also play a role in funding cultural and audiovisual actions: structural funds, the involvement of which is quite considerable (160M euros / year for France from 2000 to 2004), the 6th FPRTD (in the area of digitization of heritage), eContent programmes (promotion of European content on international networks), eTen (promotion of services of the information society), in the area of new technologies, as well as the Socrates and Leonardo programmes. Finally, programmes outside the Union may intervene in the cultural field to a limited extent: MEDA, FED, ASIA, etc.

3 - Assessment

These policies have provided real European added value to the cultural and audiovisual sectors. Accordingly, the TVWF Directive has supported the development of European television channels: in Europe today, there are 1,100 national or transnational channels and 1,900 regional or local channels, compared with about 100 in 1990. The successive MEDIA programmes have helped to revitalize Europe’s film production (the EU produces as many films as the United States, i.e. approximately 700/year) and the circulation of European works (American cinema’s share of the European theatre market has held steady for ten years at around 70%). Media Training has also supported many projects, which have had a positive effect on employment in Europe’s audiovisual sector, passing on skills to professionals that will allow them to take full advantage of the European and international dimension of the market for audiovisual programmes. Finally, thanks to the Culture 2000 programme, hundreds of books have been translated and thousands of cultural organizations have worked for the creation and dissemination of European artistic projects. Over the past few years, several cities have been ordained as “European capitals of culture”: Lille in 2004, Cork in 2005.

In a context of globalization marked by a relative hegemony of North American culture, the objective of cultural diversity, in Europe as well as the other continents, remains one of the founding themes of European Union policy. It is implemented through public support for cultural and audiovisual sectors and through regulations suited to the specificities of these sectors, while new services and new types of dissemination are developed.

1 - Protecting the flexibility of the EU and Member States in the cultural and audiovisual sectors

In recent years, various events (MAI, WTO accession negotiations, etc.) have shown the weakness of the European system in terms of protecting public cultural and audiovisual policies: “the cultural exception” established in 1994 is not one in reality, as audiovisual services, covered by the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), are “intended” to be liberalized. Such a hypothesis would end up undermining the possibility that the EU and its Member States currently have to support their cultural and audiovisual sectors. Thus, the idea of an international convention on cultural diversity has gained ground progressively, before being definitively approved in October 2003 by the UNESCO General Conference. An agreement was entered into in October 2005 with regard to a draft international legal instrument that could protect States’ flexibility to successfully conduct their policies in these sectors, as well as to strengthen international cooperation in these sectors. The European Union, and France in particular, have played a key role in favour of adopting such an instrument.

2 - Modernizing the European regulatory framework for audiovisual services

The television sector is subject to specific legislation: the “TVWF” Directive. Negotiations for a possible revision of this directive, in terms specifically of its adaptation to changes in technology, will be starting. The Commission is approaching the issue pragmatically and cautiously, in light of the Member States’ differences of opinion (modernization versus relaxation of this regulation). The main issues are: maintaining quotas, the scope of Community regulations (how new television broadcasting modes are taken into consideration), jurisdiction criteria (specifically in order to better take non-EU member channels into consideration, following the Al Manar and Sahar affairs) and changes in advertising regulations.

All things considered, the specificity of this regulation could be challenged by the proposed “services” directive, which aims to define an overall framework for implementing the principle of freedom to provide services. In order to fully guarantee the specificity of the Community audiovisual regulation, which corresponds to a specific logic (cultural impact, political pluralism, etc.), a certain number of Member States, including France, want to exclude the audiovisual and press sectors from the scope of this draft text.

3 - Strengthening European support for the cultural and film sectors

There are new Media and Culture programmes in place for the period 2007-2013. One of the issues being debated is that of more active support for cultural industries other than audiovisual industries (CDs, books, etc.), particularly affected by the problem of piracy. Accordingly, in 2003, the illegal trade in music worldwide, estimated at 150 billion items, represented three times that of sales.

4 - Having cross-cutting policies take the cultural dimension more into consideration

European law defines cross-cutting rules that apply in the audiovisual and cultural fields. But for all that, the specificity of these sectors (“cultural goods are not merchandise like other goods”) must be able to be comprehended by European legislation. Accordingly, the problem arises especially in terms of State aid (public support for cinema) and public broadcasting service. A project supported by many European ministries of culture for a “Charter for a Europe of Culture” aims to allow for such increased consideration.