Brussels, 21/05/2002 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has adopted a series of decisions to enable eight candidate countries to participate in the EU MEDIA programme. Beginning this year if possible, or in 2003, cinema professionals in Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Slovakia will be able to benefit from MEDIA programme aid to develop, distribute and promote their work, and also for training measures. The programme will be extended shortly to Slovenia and soon to other candidate countries and should make it easier for European works to circulate between the EU and the ten candidate countries. The candidate countries will make a financial contribution to the programme, part of which will come from their national budget and the rest from the PHARE programme. The procedures for participation in the candidate countries will be the same as for current Member States. Viviane Reding said "The entry of eight candidate countries, and shortly of others, to the Media programme is good news. Good news… for European cultural diversity" because the countries concerned "have achieved a satisfactory alignment of their audiovisual legislation with the Community acquis". A recent survey by the European Audiovisual Observatory revealed a low level of distribution of Central and Eastern European films in the EU (between 1996 and 2001 only 42 films from CEECs were distributed commercially in at least one Member State of the EU, seen by a total of 2.2 million people, making a market share of 0.054%).