Creative Europe Programme: EP amends programme to better suit culture and media professionals

The European Parliament's Culture and Education Committee today adopted with a large majority (25 votes in favour out of 27) a Report on the Creative Europe Programme. Jean-Marie Cavada MEP, EPP Group Spokesman on the dossier, has welcomed this adoption.

Worried after reading the European Commission's draft for the first time, which was too vague and confusing, Jean-Marie Cavada has managed, after long negotiations with the Rapporteur, to re-establish a balance to the benefit of culture, by reaffirming that "the Commission's purely economic position was not reasonable and did not correspond to what culture and media professionals were expecting."

With the numerous amendments tabled, Jean-Marie Cavada managed to obtain:

 

• The two MEDIA and CULTURE Programmes will be differentiated through the reintroduction of specific objectives for each programme;
• The part on culture in the programme will be more specific in order to give it more precision and consistency;
• Certain points related to the difficult question of the guarantee fund have been improved in order to make it more fair.

Jean-Marie Cavada is satisfied with the result he secured, in a very complicated dossier, and hopes that this draft Report, voted in a context of the crisis, will meet the common challenges that the cultural and audiovisual sectors are facing. Jean-Marie Cavada said: "My goal was in no way to give a blank cheque to the Commission. This has now been achieved. As a legislator, I ensured a clarification of the text. With this vote, the proposal has gained the coherence it lacked."