Brussels, 23/04/2013 (Agence Europe) - President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso hopes that an agreement of the EU27 in June can open transatlantic negotiations before the summer. Given the unrest of European professional film organisations and film-makers, the European Commission swears that the cultural exception will not be up for negotiation.
Barroso promises Kerry an agreement before summer. During the visit of American Secretary for State John Kerry to Brussels on 22 April, Barroso said he hopes to obtain the agreement of the 27 EU member states “before summer” to initiate the free-trade negotiations with the United States in July. Barroso and Kerry discussed the “very promising” transatlantic agreement and how the two partners can make progress. “I informed the secretary of state that I believe we can get a mandate from our member states before summer, that we can keep the momentum and have this historic game changer agreement ready as soon as possible”, Barroso stated in a press release after their meeting. At the end of the informal meeting of European trade ministers in Dublin last week, the Irish Presidency of the EU Council of Ministers gave itself until mid-June to tie up the Commission's negotiating mandate amended by the member states (see EUROPE 10830).
De Gucht on wrong track with cultural exception. Led by Belgian film-makers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, numerous European film directors - including Michael Haneke from Austria, Thomas Vintberg from Denmark, Michel Hazanavicius, Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache from France, Ken Loach, Mike Leigh and Stephen Frears from the United Kingdom, Pedro Almodovar from Spain and David Lynch from the United States - have signed a petition called “The cultural exception is not negotiable”, along with several European professional film organisations (Eurocinéma, EuropaCinéma, EuropaDistribution, FIAD, SAA and UNIC) to ask European leaders not to include the audiovisual sector in the draft free trade agreement. “13 March may become a major turning point in European construction - and a scandalous one. That was the day the European Commission, under the leadership of Commissioner Karel De Gucht, decided to trample on the cultural exception and adopted a draft negotiation mandate that includes audiovisual and film services in the EU-US trade discussions”, they deplore, also criticising “the image of the cultural resignation”, which in their view characterises the Barroso II Commission at the end of its mandate.
“The cultural exception is not up for negotiation”, De Gucht immediately belied in a statement. “Europe will not put its cultural exception at risk (…). Nothing in the free-trade agreement with the United States will harm (…) Europe's cultural diversity. The negotiations will duly take into account the different sectoral sensitivities of the European Union. The audiovisual sector has a clear place among these sensitive sectors. Culture is not a commodity - far from it. It enjoys a special status with EU law. The European Commission is committed to this principle and is even obliged by law to defend this status under the European Treaties”, promised De Gucht, adding that “those member states that wish to maintain their assistance to this industry are free to do so. France in particular remains perfectly free to maintain its subsidy schemes and quotas” permitted by the directive on audiovisual media. On Tuesday, Commission staff said that this did not mean that the audiovisual sector would be totally excluded from the negotiations.
France also wants to exclude defence. French Minister for Trade Nicole Bricq, who last week threatened a French veto on a negotiating mandate that included the audiovisual sector, expressed her desire on Monday to exclude the defence sector from the negotiations. “We know that the American public markets are very closed and we will not accept opening ours when the American defence market is closed”, she stated at a conference in Chicago the day before meetings planned for Tuesday with members of the American government in Washington. In February 2011 the European aerospace group EADS lost a call for tenders for renewing the tanker aircraft fleet of the American Air Force after a procedure interspersed with irregularities, Bricq said. “With other member states, we want to exclude everything to do with defence from the negotiation”, Bricq went on. “The term partnership has a very precise meaning for the French. It means that we negotiate as two equal partners with common objectives and projects”, she said, stating that the American resolve to negotiate with this kind of mindset should be verified. “Lowering customs barriers between Europe and the United States is not the most important issue. We have to bring our different standards closer together. We need to agree, for example, on environmental standards, but we know that we don't have the same requirements in Europe as in the United States”, Bricq said, predicting that the negotiations will be “long and difficult”. “I am convinced that we must not be in a hurry as Europeans are not the first interessees”, she concluded (our translation). (EH/transl.fl)