10-12 September Culture ministers informal

Date: 17/09/1998

EU CULTURE ministers met their counterparts from central and eastern European countries (CEECs) for an exchange of views on the cultural aspects of future EU enlargement at the beginning of their three-day meeting in Linz. Austrian Minister Peter Whitman also chaired a public debate on the issue.

THE discussion focused on ways in which media and cultural professionals in nine applicant countries - Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Slovak and Czech Republics and Romania - can get involved in the Ariane, Kaleidoscope and Raphael programmes following the EU's decision to admit participants from these countries. CEEC ministers were reminded that changes to the way the Phare assistance programme operates would allow them to target their own priority projects for funding, including regional and national projects in the cultural sector.

EU MINISTERS reached a consensus on plans to launch a 'culture framework programme', and agreed that they needed to allocate more funds to this than the 167 million ecu proposed by the European Commission. They also agreed to prolong the existing Ariane and Kaleidoscope culture programmes until the end of 1999 and to allocate the same level of funding to them as for 1998. Culture Commissioner Marcelino Oreja said he would present the proposals to fellow Commissioners “immediately”.

THE future of public service broadcasting in the EU at a time of ever-increasing convergence between the traditional media, information technology and telecoms was also discussed.

Oreja said that convergence offered new opportunities to broadcasters, but he pointed out that public funds such as licence fees should not be used to finance new services offered by public service broadcasters going beyond their traditional remit. He added that “certain principles should be applied to finance public service broadcasts” which should be based on “proportionality and transparency”.

OREJA presented a report on the next steps for EU audio-visual policy to ministers. The report recommends a number of new support measures for cinema production and distribution activities in the Union's Media II programme. These include a broadening of the 'automatic' funding schemes which channel grants to distribution companies on the basis of sales in foreign EU markets in the previous year.

The report also outlines the Commission's plans for the mid-term review of the programme.