The committee adopted the report by Luckas VANDER TAELEN (Greens/EFA, B) on the Commission communication. The report repeated many of the points made in the resolution adopted by Parliament on 13 November 2001. Pointing to the dual nature of the sector (industrial and cultural), the committee again stressed the importance of the Commission's position on state aid for the audiovisual sector, called for tax reductions and other specifically adapted financial instruments, highlighted the importance of safeguarding the European cinematographic heritage and spoke of the challenge which digital film posed for the future of the sector. This should be borne in mind, it said, when the Television without Frontiers Directive was being reviewed.
MEPs therefore urged the Commission to do everything possible to ensure that audiovisual works could move freely within the internal market by 2005 and wanted to see initiatives taken on the basis of the EP's resolution of 13 November 2001. They expressed support for the Commission's moves to make the criteria used when examining aid to the audiovisual sector in the Member States more transparent, but regretted the fact that certain parts of its communication of September 2001 remained vague or were incomplete. The committee also pointed out that there was no real competition between the EU national audiovisual industries and that the EU market was dominated by the United States industry.
Despite the divided opinions of those in the profession on the feasibility of such a scheme at Community level, the committee stressed the need for compulsory legal deposit of works by the Member States and called on the public support funds for the audiovisual sector, as a transitional measure, to make it compulsory for their beneficiaries to deposit copies of any of their works which had received state aid through those funds. It also urged the Commission and the Council to create an instrument to cofinance work to digitise archives, through a specific measure, for instance, in the next version of the MEDIA programme, based on a MEDIA Plus pilot project.
The Commission was also asked to encourage the Member States to foster the creation of financial institutions specialising in the audiovisual sector, and to facilitate the creation of a risk capital fund, so as to be better able to respond to the i2i audiovisual initiative by the EIB and the Commission. �