European Affairs
Reminder
EMO is asking for the creation of a specific programme for the culture industries, following the example of the Media+ programme.
In the case that such a programme could not be implemented, EMO is asking for the adaptation of the programme proposed by the Commission, so that it could be opened to culture projects related to culture industries and which necessitate financing.
EMO and the Commission’s proposal
EMO agrees with the objectives fixed by the Commission (free movement of works, mobility, and intercultural dialogue), insofar as this programme helps to develop efficient action plans with the view of reaching these objectives in the field of culture industries, especially music industries.
EMO agrees with the principle of not defining the fields of intervention by sector of activity.
However, EMO approves the creation of a cross-sectional budget line, covering the various sectors that are potentially eligible for the programme, allowing to adapt the intervention of the programme when the project concerns a sector of activity, whatever it is (music, book, architecture, visual arts, etc.) but in the field of “culture industry” (), that is to say when the project requires participation and financing by the culture industries () linked to the sector in question
Why a new budget line?
Because in the present formulation of the proposal:
- The selection procedures, the way they are run in the Culture 2000 programme, present a great risk of rejection for projects linked to culture industries (*). A jury that is only composed of experts belonging to the culture sphere “stricto sensu” do not possess sufficient expertise in the sector of activity linked to the culture industries (*), and thus are not competent to judge and select the culture projects linked to the culture industries (*). (And this is what happened in the framework of Culture 2000).
- The forms of intervention, that is to say the amount of money granted for the financing, and the rules of cofinancing are not appropriate to the projects linked to the culture industries.
Draft Proposal
Considering the examples described below (“European Tour Support” and “European offices abroad”), it appears that the new programme should contain a new category of projects that would be likely to receive the support of the Commission. A new experimental line could be created for these projects, with specific rules for the amount of the financing, the rules of co-financing nd the number of partners.
These projects could be defined as cultural projects necessitating participation and financing from the culture industries linked to the relevant sector, without the budget being allocated beforehand to the different sectors of activity, in order to stick to the programme ’s principles.
At the beginning of this project, the EU subsidies could represent up to 80% of the costs that appear in the project’s budget, considering that an obligation of results would be fixed, which would specify that the share of the financing on the culture industries’ part added to the costs in the budget and necessary to the achievement of the project would represent, at the end, more than 50% of the total financing of the proposed project. Then there is a double levy effect on the professionals’ financial investments.
The project would be presented by a platform of professional organisations representing at least 12 Member States.
The number of projects could be limited to ten or so, lasting for the whole duration of the programme.
The amount of the budget granted for this new category of projects could evolve according to the number of coorganising partners (12, 16, 18 or more than 20)
Additional element to the Plan
DG Education & Culture could advocate the requests formulated by the representatives of the culture industries to the other DGs of the Commission in order to facilitate the achievement of the action plan:
- to DG External Relations, in order to obtain financing with the objective of developing cultural cooperation with third countries
- to the Structural Funds administration and DG Enterprise in order to obtain funds financing in advance, managed by financial entities at the regional level, seeking to facilitate the access of SMEs or micro-businesses to the financing necessary to the development of their activities at the European or international scale.
(*) Culture industries other than audiovisual: in other words, culture industries not supported by the Media+ programme.
Annex
Two examples in the field of music
As far as the European professional organisations are concerned, there are two priority actions:
1. European Tour Support
(For a description, see EMO’s action plan)
The amount of subsidies
The amount of subsidies necessary to the achievement of the project is much more important than what has been proposed by the Commission (500 000 Euros for each project submitted)
As a matter of fact, in order to satisfy the needs, the average basis should be 125 tours/year subsidized up to 15 000 Euros minimum (one of the criteria for the attribution of this grant says that the subsidy can not be superior to 1/4th of the total cost of the tour. Professionals involved in the organisation of tours and concerts – producers, promoters, record labels, publishers, etc. – shall provide together the 3/4th of the financing for the tour).
To sum up, in order to achieve this programme, an amount of 1 875 000 Euros (125 × 15 000 Euros) should be established for the subsidies per year, bearing in mind that this amount doesn’t cover more than 25% of the total costs of the tours organized in the framework of this programme.
The rules of cofinancing
The financing granted by the Commission in the framework of the programme which amounts to 1 875 000 Euros should bring the financing from professionals to an amount up to 5 625 000 Euros, with a total budget of 7 500 000 Euros.
But the financing coming from the professionals can not be guaranteed by a prior commitment since the organisation of tours can be decided upon a few months, sometimes weeks, before the tour.
As a consequence, the share coming from cofinancing can only be controlled a posteriori.
Then, 50% of the amount of the subsidy for every project could be granted a priori considering the presented elements, and the other 50% granted after justification proving the effective achievement of the project is presented.
Thanks to such a support, the number of tours in Europe should increase, the risk taken by professionals being balanced and reduced by the subsidy available through this programme.
The number of partners
Eventually, this could concern all the Member States, presuming that they could all set up a national structure supporting export (following the model of music export offices). These offices could get involved in the project and act as intermediaries at the national level.
The important number of partners justifies the demand for a higher contribution (that is to say higher than the 500 000 Euros mentioned in the present Culture 2007 proposal).
At the beginning of the implementation of the programme in 2007, at least a dozen Member States could be concerned, through their offices for export support.
2. European offices abroad
Following the pilot project that lead to the pre-development of a European office in New York, and responding to the professionals’ demand, establishing offices in NY, in China, or even in India or in South America could appear to be a relevant starting point for a project in the long term, and likely to be suitable for this new programme.
Considering the average cost of an export office (400 000 Euros), the total cost of this project should be estimated around 1 600 000 Euros.
The activities carried out by these offices aim to facilitate the investments coming from the professional sphere, particularly through the investment budgets of record companies for the development of their artists on a chosen market (20 000 Euros per artist, in average).
These activities have to be taken over on a national level by the music export offices present in the countries in question, which are the partners of the project.
As for the preceding project, this could eventually concern all the Member States, presuming that they could all set up a national structure supporting export (following the model of music export offices). These offices could get involved in the project and act as intermediaries at the national level.
At the beginning of the implementation of the programme in 2007, at least a dozen Member States could be concerned, through their offices for export support.
The amount of financing
In order to finance the entire plan, that is to say 4 offices × 400 000 Euros in average, the total amount for financing would be 1 600 000 Euros.
The rules of cofinancing
Considering that the activities carried out by these offices aim to foster the investments coming from the record companies for the development of their artists, the cofinancing could be divided into a share of 80% for the Commission (1 280 000 Euros) and 20% for the project partners (national export offices), that is to say 320 000 Euros.
These investments made by the record companies represent a very important levy effect and are quite difficult to quantify a priori, so that only an evaluation will help to find a precise amount in the near future. However, we can forecast that they will represent between 40% and 80%, or even more, of the amount of the Commission’s subsidy.
The number of partners
At the beginning of the implementation of the programme in 2007, at least a dozen Member States could be concerned, through their offices for export support. As we have stressed this point with the previous example, this fact shows even more the need for these projects to be granted a bigger European subsidy
Towards a European Music Policy
PREAMBLE
The programmes set aside for the culture and audio-visual sector in the enlarged European Union comprising 25 countries will be 120 million Euro per year, which corresponds to 0.1% of the European Community budget, in other words, 30 Euro per year per European citizen.
The Culture 2000 programme, ongoing until 2006, has an annual budget of approximately 30 million Euro, which seems quite insufficient.
Also, this programme does not respond to the needs of the culture professionals. In particular, it is not open to the cultural industries.
A new cultural programme is being prepared which will come into effect on 1 January 2007, in the framework of the new budget of the European Union
POSITION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION
The first direction given to this future programme, communicated by the European Commission in March 2004[1], has started to worry many professional organisations. There is no mention of any specific action in the cultural industries sector. The three objectives mentioned for the future cultural programme are:
- encouraging transnational mobility for professionals in the cultural sector,
- the transnational circulation of works, including intangible works,
- and the development of an inter-cultural dialogue.
The philosophy of supporting one-off projects, by definition a random choice, could mean a return to the previous programme (Culture 2000), with a risk of weakening the coherence and the visibility of the European support.
EMO is now waiting for the official proposal of the European Commission to the European Council and to the European Parliament (planned for approx. September 2004)
POSITION OF EMO
Should a specific programme for cultural industries not be set up by the European Commission within the new cultural programme, a compromise could be found in requesting at least a specific treatment (second step) for the cultural industries within the new programme. This specific treatment would include specific modalities for selection of projects as well as specific criteria adapted to the sector of activity.
AIMS
The cultural industries are the big outsiders of the EU action in the cultural sector and in particular of the Culture 2000 Programme. At the moment, only the audio-visual sector benefits of a EU support within the framework of a completely different and specific programme.
All works of art need to be published and distributed, to allow their appropriation by artists that will become their interpreters, and reach the audience to whom the work is being addressed. Cultural industries are indispensable to the fixing, the distribution and the promotion of works of art.
To promote creation, the role of publishers and the record companies is essential, as well as the role of the different actors of the music branch, who all participate in making the work reach the audience. The actions of these different actors occur in the framework of a specific economy, the cultural economy, with an industrial dimension specific to each sector of activity.
This industrial dimension is particularly present in the book or in the music industry where the production and duplication of supports (books, CDs a.o.), their promotion and their diffusion, is done by enterprises of different sizes – micro-enterprises, SMEs or multinational – that act following the rules of the market and of the economy of the sector.
Industrial reproduction of a cultural product allows thus to circulate and to sustain the cultural vitality and diversity of Europe.
The music industry’s priorities:
With all of the different meetings and conferences organised on this topic [2] , as well as the consultations with 18 countries -current and future Member States – carried out by EMO in 2003, this shows that there is a general consensus that the following priorities should be highlighted in order to promote the diversity of music in Europe:
- the circulation and promotion of national music (repertoires, artists, productions) throughout Europe, notably by supporting live music,
- International promotion, export and exchanges to improve the position/presence of European music on the international market.
- Exchanges of information and professional training in the music industry in order to raise the level of competitivity and expertise of the music in Europe,
- The support to the SMEs, throughout this difficult period, due, in part, to the current crisis within the record industry.
The music industry professionals expect the following to be included in a future programme:
- That a specific place is kept for the culture/cultural industries, notably the music industry, with its specific modalities concerning the selection and implementation of projects.
- That it allows the development of a real action plan with the right support:
In the field of the circulation of repertoires, artists and productionsTo tours of European artists,To festivals participating in the promotion of new artists,To an exchange of experiences between the authors, composers and publishers,In the international promotion fieldTo the creation of European offices in the leading markets or in the main emerging markets,To the common participation of European professionals to the main international fairs,In the training sectorTo the organisation of seminars and training sessions aimed at professionals
This action plan should be led by one (or more) platform bringing together all national music promotion organisations of the different Member States. In the long term, these organisations would be likely to implement structuring actions, which would have the advantage:
- To settle locally the European actions engaged in in the framework of the platform,
- To facilitate cooperation between the different professionals/networks, notably by enabling them to realise economies of scale while reinforcing their means of actions,
- To facilitate exchanges of information and know-how between professionals/networks,
By simplifying the administrative procedures; facilitating the investments of the operators; favouring long-term actions (and not just random support to one-off actions without any representativity). The European Union will, thereby, obtain a coherent and visible cultural programme that will promote cultural and musical diversity in Europe and throughout the world.
CONCLUSION
The European institutions and public authorities of the Member States must not underestimate the stakes linked to promoting cultural diversity, which passes by the promotion of cultures and music of each Member State.
Cooperation between professionals at European level must be encouraged through the appropriate means, notably in the cultural industries sector.
The professionals are the “link” between the creation and the public. Without taking into account their proposals, based on their excellent knowledge of their sector, the European institutions risk putting in place an unrealistic programme with no real impact on the development of exchanges, and wasting the small amount of money set aside for this.
[1] See communication from the Commission: IP/04/315, Strasbourg, 9 March 2004, The future of education and citizenship policies: The Commission adopts guidelines for future programmes after 2006.
http://europa.eu.int/comm/dgs/education_culture/index_en.htm
http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/programmes/newprog_en.html
[2] Conference of 13 October 2001 in Brussels, Forum on the cultural cooperation organised by the Commission in November 2001, and in particular, the workshop on cultural industries, as well as the meetings at Midem 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004