Brussels, 11/06/2013 (Agence Europe) - While it protects the cultural exception, the amended draft mandate for the European Commission includes audiovisual services so as to give the Commission some room for manoeuvre in its forthcoming negotiations with the United States. The US does not draw up any red lines.
In the run-up to the meeting of European trade ministers in Luxembourg on Friday 14 June, which is due to approve the Commission's mandate to negotiate a comprehenisve free-trade agreement with the US - an agreement named a transatlantic partnership on trade and investment - a diplomatic offensive rages unabated to convince France not to block the start of the negotiations. Since the draft mandate was presented in mid-March, Paris has been threatening to use its veto if the audiovisual sector is not excluded from the scope of the negotiations, arguing the cultural exception.
So as to give guarantees to France, the Irish Presidency - which is at the helm the EU Council of Ministers for six months - has been working on a draft mandate which, according to the Financial Times on 11 June, does not exclude the audiovisual sector from the scope of the negotiations but tries to draw red lines around the sector and the maintenance of national protection. Given the sensitivity of the audiovisual sector for the EU, “the mechanisms existing at the level of either the European Union or the member states for the promotion of the European cultural works shall not be affected”, says the draft text. Thus “all forms of subsidies to the audiovisual sector shall be excluded from any commitments”, it states. Furthermore, the EU and its member states reportedly also have the possibility of adapting the legislation to development of the digital environment, with reference to new modes of distribution - especially on the internet. On Tuesday, staff of European Commissioner for Trade Karel De Gucht again repeated that the system of quotas and subsidies granted at national and European level through the MEDIA programme, and also the taxation dimension (for example, taxes on cinema tickets), will be maintained.
The challenge in this matter lies, of course, in the protection of obligatory TV broadcast quotas for national and European works, protected by the audiovisual services directive, for which the Commission does not challenge the minimum thresholds that stand at 50% for most member states and 60-70% for France, respectively for private and public channels, but which it would like to see limited to a threshold below 100%, in order to give a margin of manoeuvre for the negotiations with Washington. “The United States would like a certain legal security that the quotas will not rise to 100%”, states a source close to the file at the Commission.
The challenge also lies in video on-demand, on which the directive does not impose a minimum presentation threshold - while France imposes quotas of 60% for European works and of 40% for works in the French language, this is not the case in other member states. And also on content distributed on line. The internet and the fear of letting American giants in the cinema industry seize the European market are also at the centre of the controversy. “It involves not the European heritage in literature, music and film but the future of digital tools - for which it's difficult to imagine what they will produce in five or ten years' time”, says French newspaper Le Figaro on 11 June, quoting diplomatic sources. To have some room for manoeuvre with Washington, the Commission hopes for flexibility for these new media.
While France remains unswerving, as can be seen from the latest statements of its officials, a fair number of the 14 member states that signed the letter of the European ministers for culture demanding the exclusion of audiovisual services from the Commission's negotiating mandate - a position supported by the European Parliament in its resolution on 23 May - have since distanced themselves. “More and more member states have quite a clear vision of the type of guarantees that we should give ourselves on what will be negotiated in the audiovisual sector and what will not be”, confirmed a Community source close to the matter on Tuesday, speaking of a “certain rationalisation” at the Council now.
Including audiovisual services in the mandate, while guaranteeing the cultural exception, is a negotiating tactic. “If we can put up an exclusion that is not necessary, we offer the US an avenue for the defensive”, the Commission side explains, because while they draw up red lines on financial regulation, public procurement, and air and sea transport, the Americans have not openly excluded any sector from the negotiation. “We don't want to negotiate an agreement at any old price and to dash it off. But it is not possible to be on the offensive and the defensive at the same time” when facing the US, the Commission warns. In other words, excluding a sector from the negotiation would run the risk of seeing Washington close the window of opportunity in a sector where the EU could achieve great gains.
This tactic is in line with the thinking of British Prime Minister David Cameron who, with less than a week to go before the G8 summit in Lough Erne on 17-18 June, is putting on the utmost pressure in order to present US President Barack Obama with a European mandate “without restrictions”. (EH/transl.fl)