Text tabled : A7-0366/2011

  Erminia Mazzoni (PPE), in writing. – (IT) I believe deeply in the need to promote culture in order to stimulate social and economic growth. Cinema is a key form of culture and needs to be able to benefit from innovation without losing its traditional value. Progress does not always lead to advancement but sometimes distorts important pillars of our civilisation to the extent of destroying them.

In this case, however, it is reasonable to support the initiative to speed up the switchover from analogue to digital in cinemas through additional financing instruments and earmarked funds within the EU budget. This modernisation needs to be supported through investment during the launch phase. The product is highly remunerative in terms of wider and faster dissemination, lower management costs and market access for a vast audience of talented young people, who are currently penalised by the costs of distribution.

I voted in favour in order not to allow culture and social policies to always get tangled up in the crisis, victims of an outmoded way of thinking that is unable to calculate the huge returns and savings that those sectors produce.