The European Parliament adopted, by 586 votes to 36, a resolution on the cultural industries in Europe. The own-initiative report had been tabled for consideration in plenary by Guy BONO (PES, FR) on behalf of the Committee on Culture and Education.
MEPs welcome the desire shown by the Commission and the Council to recognise the central role played by culture and creativity as important factors in promoting European citizenship, bringing the cultures of citizens closer together and achieving the objectives of the Lisbon Strategy in terms of growth and employment.
Parliament emphasises that culture and the cultural sector must be taken into consideration in all other EU policies, particularly those concerning the internal market, competition, trade, business and research and development. The Commission is called upon to put in place a structure aimed at improving the coordination of policies and activities that have an impact on the cultural and creative sector, as well as to set up a task force for culture and the creative economy,
Parliament feels that it is essential to have adequate funding for cultural and creative industries as well as for creative communities. It calls on the Council, the Commission and the Member States to take the action required, recommending mixed methods of funding and financial security, and promoting a regulatory and fiscal framework that favours cultural industries as well as creative communities, and more particularly by applying tax credits and reduced rates of VAT to all cultural products, including online works.
Parliament welcomes the idea of increasing the mobility of persons, goods and services in the creativity industry and highlights the need for better statistics in order to enable different countries to develop targeted policies. In this respect, MEPs reiterate the requests made in the Parliament Resolution on the social security status of artists. Qualification, apprenticeship and training systems should be improved.
MEPs also consider that well-organised collective cross-border management of copyright and related rights and business models respectful of the rights of all right holders are essential to allow creative potential to be exploited to the full whilst securing fair remuneration to all categories of right holders.
For more detail and to view the report, click on the external link below.
To view an associated media release, see MEPs call for sharper focus on jobs and growth potential of cultural industries.