Future of EU culture safe in trade talks, promises Lamy

Date: 22/05/03

By Peter Chapman

PASCAL Lamy, the trade commissioner, told MEPs this week that it would take a "miracle" for the European Union to hand over its hard-won exemption for culture in global talks on market opening.

The French trade chief told the European Parliament's culture committee that the EU was not willing to negotiate away its right to give special treatment to industries such as cinema, theatre and television during the current Doha round of trade talks.

Speaking to rapturous applause at the meeting on Monday (19 May), he insisted there was little chance it ever would, as long as the Union remained a fragmented cultural market, unable to compete head-on with the Hollywood hegemony over cinema.

"Why should this change in the future?" asked Lamy. "If by some miracle, and it would have to be a miracle, we were able to find a comparative advantage in this field, then we could actively pursue our interests; but I don't think that will be the case for a long time to come. There is not, and there will not be, liberalization of European markets in this field."

In the meantime, Lamy insisted the EU's policy of cultural protectionism - such as its quotas on US television programmes and subsidies for European film production and distribution - had proved their "usefulness" so well that even third countries had implemented them.

Nevertheless, Lamy repeated calls for a switch to qualified majority voting (QMV) from unanimity in the cultural area in the EU's own decision-making procedure on trade policy when the Union takes in ten new member states next year.

The issue is currently being discussed at the Convention on the future of Europe. Critics have claimed this approach would threaten the EU's system of cultural protection, but the French commissioner said the voting power of "pro-culture" countries - such as France, Italy, Germany and Spain - would guarantee that cultural issues were well protected.

Moreover, a switch to QMV would make it less likely that one country could thwart the wishes of the vast majority or trigger horse-trading on unrelated issues.

"I have been told that commercial thinking will dominate and we will apply mercantilist rules. This is a very minimal risk. My argument is that, if we maintain unanimity, we would not win any more battles," he added, referring to the previous Uruguay round of trade talks during the early 1990s, during which the EU insisted on an exemption for cultural areas.