The Committee on Culture and Education adopted the report drawn up by Ruth HIERONYMI (EPP-ED, DE) amending, under the first reading of the codecision procedure, the proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing an audiovisual cooperation programme with professionals from third countries MEDIA Mundus.
The main amendments are as follows:
Improving the coherence and clarity of the proposal: with a view to increasing the clarity of the proposal, MEPs modified the overall structure in order to indicate more clearly the general objectives of the programme (which remain the same as in the initial proposal). They also modify the wording and presentation of the “specific objectives” of the programme. These are included in chapter 2 of the proposal and take the form of three specific objectives: (i) information exchange, training and market intelligence; (ii) competitiveness and distribution; (iii) circulation. Also in the interest of general coherence, MEPs modified the composition of the proposal, merging the article dealing with the implementation of the operational objectives with the article on the implementation of the decision.
Copyright: under the first objective of the programme (information exchange, training and market intelligence), MEPs call for measures to strengthen the skills of European and other professionals from third countries to improve their understanding of the operating conditions, legal frameworks and copyright of their respective audiovisual markets.
Comitology: contrary to the approach proposed by the Commission, according to which measures to be taken in accordance with the management procedure concern the selection of proposals in excess of EUR 400 000 per beneficiary and year, MEPs call for the procedure to apply respectively for proposals in excess of the following amounts per specific objective:
- EUR 200 000 per beneficiary per year, in the case of specific objective 1;
- EUR 300 000 per beneficiary per year, in the case of specific objective 2;
- EUR 300 000 per beneficiary per year, in the case of specific objective 3.
All other selection decisions shall be adopted by the Commission (under its own terms), providing the European Parliament with information.
Multilingualism: in relation to the horizontal policies that the programme will help to strengthen, MEPs add encouraging awareness of common values and multilingualism in the world.
Report: MEPs call on the Commission to present a Communication on the continuation of the programme by 31 January 2012 at the latest, instead of by 30 June 2012.
Annexes: some modifications were also made to the annex to the proposal in terms of its composition and clarity.