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The European Parliament adopted, by 586 votes to 36,
a resolution on the cultural industries in Europe. The own-initiative report
had been tabled for consideration in plenary by Guy BONO (PES, FR) on
behalf of the Committee on Culture and Education. MEPs welcome the desire shown by the Commission and
the Council to recognise the central role played by culture and creativity as
important factors in promoting European citizenship, bringing the cultures of
citizens closer together and achieving the objectives of the Lisbon Strategy
in terms of growth and employment. They call on the Commission and Member States to set as their priorities, policies based not only on entrepreneurial
innovation, but on the innovation of cultural actions and creative economies.
The Commission and Council are asked to clarify what constitutes a European
view of culture, creativity and innovation and to develop structured policies
to promote the real development of European creative industries and to
incorporate them in a proper European strategy for culture. Parliament emphasises that culture and the cultural
sector must be taken into consideration in all other EU policies,
particularly those concerning the internal market, competition, trade,
business and research and development. The Commission is called upon to put
in place a structure aimed at improving the coordination of policies and
activities that have an impact on the cultural and creative sector, as well
as to set up a task force for culture and the creative economy, so as to
propose, in cooperation with the European Parliament, concrete measures in
the context of the Community policies. Parliament feels that it is essential to have
adequate funding for cultural and creative industries as well as for creative
communities. It calls on the Council, the Commission and the Member States to take the action required, recommending mixed methods of funding and
financial security, and promoting a regulatory and fiscal framework that
favours cultural industries as well as creative communities, and more
particularly by applying tax credits and reduced rates of VAT to all cultural
products, including online works. Parliament considers it necessary for the
Structural Funds, programmes for SMEs and the Seventh Framework Programme for
research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007-2013)
to give pride of place to allocate sufficient funding for the cultural and
creative industries, including SMEs and individual artistic undertakings in
the field. It requests the Commission put forward a study on the impact of
funding from the Structural Funds, and the Seventh Framework Programme, for
the cultural and educational sectors. Parliament also considers that adequate
funding for the cultural and creative industries, as well as for creative
communities is essential. The Commission must look into the possibility of
setting up a programme similar to the MEDIA Programme and complete the
procedures for implementing the initiative for the European digital library.
As a preliminary step, it should set up a mechanism under the 'Culture'
programme allowing non-audiovisual cultural industries to have access to
Community funding to promote books (inter alia by way of joint stands at book
fairs). Members also invite the Commission and Member States to increase the
amount of aid for translation. Parliament welcomes the idea of increasing the
mobility of persons, goods and services in the creativity industry and
highlights the need for better statistics in order to enable different
countries to develop targeted policies. In this respect, MEPs reiterate the
requests made in the Parliament
Resolution on the social security status of artists. Qualification,
apprenticeship and training systems should be improved. MEPs also consider that well-organised collective
cross-border management of copyright and related rights and business models
respectful of the rights of all right holders are essential to allow creative
potential to be exploited to the full whilst securing fair remuneration to
all categories of right holders. In the context of rapid technological and
market evolution, and with a view to ensuring that cultural industries and
creators benefit from the development of digital platforms, Parliament urges
the Commission to rethink the critical issue of intellectual property from
the cultural and economic point of view. The Commission should invite all
those active in the sector, particularly telecom operators and Internet service
providers, to join forces and seek solutions that are equitable to large and
small stakeholders, in the interest of a balance between the opportunities
for access to cultural events and content and intellectual property rights
that guarantee fair, effective remuneration to all categories of right
holders, real choice for consumers, and cultural diversity. On this point,
Parliament draws attention to the fact that criminalising consumers who are
not seeking to make a profit is not the right solution to combat digital
piracy.
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