Brussels, 03/05/2012 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament (EP) culture and education committee held a debate, in Brussels on 26 April, on the new Creative Europe programme, proposed by the European Commission. This programme is designed to replace and bring under one umbrella the current Culture, MEDIA and MEDIA Mundus schemes. There was agreement among MEPs and experts on the need for increased funding, stressing that the distinctive characteristics of the two strands of the scheme must be maintained, and the non-commercial cultural and creative sector protected.
The experts all highlighted the crucial importance of support for culture and artistic creation in Europe, not only terms of economic value (jobs, contribution to European GDP, etc) but also of education and “spiritual riches”, in the words of Romanian film director Radu Mihaileanu. The experts all pointed to the “cultural exception”, underlining that culture is not a commercial area like all the others. Better protection for non-profit-making sectors should, they argued, be a priority in the Commission's new provisions and economic competitiveness should not be the rule in this area. The emphasis should be put rather on creating support mechanisms that will allow cultural players and companies to contribute actively to artistic creation in Europe.
The issues that came back time and again in the debate related to funding under the new programme and also the independence and particularity of each of the two strands - culture and the media. While the experts and MEPs who spoke in the debate welcomed the increase in funding proposed by the Commission, they called for more information on exactly how the money is to be shared out, by objective and sector financed. Speakers all revealed a certain scepticism on bringing the Culture and MEDIA programmes under one umbrella. Despite the possible synergies that could be created with one single programme, speakers pointed out that the two sectors have very specific characteristics that should be maintained.
Rapporteur on Creative Europe Silvia Costa (S&D, Italy) and MEPs Jean-Marie Cavada (EPP, France), Helga Trüpel (Greens/EFA, Germany), Marco Scurria (EPP, Italy) and Petra Kammerevert (S&D, Germany) backed the points of view expressed by the experts. They called for clarification from the Commission and the Danish Presidency of the Council of Ministers, particularly on how the budget is to be allocated sector by sector, so that they might be able to come to an objective assessment of the impact of the programme. In a press release, the S&D Group says it is essential that the new programme continues to provide financial support to not-for-profit and micro-sized cultural organisations. “We need to be certain that access to the loans … is not restricted to those operators with the greatest industrial clout and the best lobbying operations. At the moment, there is not enough detail in the proposal for us to be satisfied on that point”, said Silvia Costa. (IL/transl.rt)