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.