Brussels, 18/03/2011 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 17 March, the European Parliament education and culture committee adopted almost unanimously the report by Marie-Thérèse Sanchez-Schmid (EPP, France) entitled Unlocking the potential of cultural and creative industries. Although these industries generate several hundred billion euro in turnover every year, they do not have the resources necessary to release their full potential.
In her report, Sanchez-Schmid calls for a real European strategy to be set in place in order to exploit this potential. She states that the strategy must take into account the dual nature of these industries, their economic nature on the one hand, through their contribution in terms of employment, growth and creation of wealth, but mostly their cultural nature, on the other hand, through activities contributing to the blossoming and citizens' social and cultural integration.
According to Sanchez-Schmid, emphasis must be placed on education and on heightening awareness of the sector's specific features, by helping European citizens to acquire the creative, entrepreneurial and intercultural skills they need. Furthermore, she recommends the optimal use of the opportunities offered by public financing and particularly the cohesion policy's structural funds to encourage local projects acting in favour of innovation and attractiveness of the territories. Financial circles should be familiarised with these industries' potentials in order to promote access to financing and find innovative and intelligent systems of risk-sharing, she explains. Finally, she adds, cultural and creative industries will only be able to fully unlock their potential if intellectual property rights are respected. In that perspective, new systems of licence acquisition must be set up at European level to facilitate the distribution of works. By way of conclusion, she states: “Cultural industries are essential to the recovery of European growth, let us make a creative growth out of it”. (I.L./transl.jl)