Proposal for a Council Decision on the position to be taken on behalf of the European Union as regards the extension of the entitlement to co-productions as provided for in Article 5 of the Protocol on Cultural Cooperation to the Free Trade Agreement between the European Union and its Member States, of the one part, and the Republic of Korea, of the other part

The Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the European Union and its Member States and South Korea has been provisionally applied since July 2011. The Protocol on Cultural Cooperation (hereafter: the Protocol), concluded by the Parties within the framework of the FTA, established a framework within which the Parties shall cooperate to facilitate exchanges in cultural activities, goods and services, including in the audio-visual sector, and to improve the conditions governing such exchanges.

By derogation from the institutional provisions of the FTA, the Trade Committee shall have no jurisdiction over the Protocol. Instead the Committee on Cultural Cooperation, established within the framework of the Protocol and comprising senior officials from within the administration of each Party, shall exercise all functions of the Trade Committee as regards the Protocol, where such functions are relevant for the purposes of implementing the Protocol. The Committee on Cultural Cooperation met for the first time on 5 December 2013 in Brussels and the Parties on that occasion shared information on their respective legal bases and cultural activities.

With the Protocol, the Parties, in conformity with their respective legislation, agreed inter alia to grant an entitlement for audio-visual co-productions between producers from the EU party and Korea to benefit from their respective schemes for the promotion of local/regional cultural content according to certain specific conditions. Such co-productions can be considered European works within the EU and Korean works within Korea, as long as they respect the conditions stipulated in Article 5 of the Protocol (see points 8(a) to (c) in particular). This entitlement was established for a period of three years (from 1 July 2011 until 30 June 2014) and it is now proposed that this entitlement be renewed for another three years.

EUR-Lex: COM(2014)81: Follow the progress of this proposal through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2014:081:FIN

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