07/08/2013 - The budget for Creative Europe still needs to be approved

After Aviva Silver stepped down as the head of the MEDIA programme, Xavier Troussard, who was previously the Acting Director of the General Directorate of Education and Culture (EAC), has taken over her position in July. With a master’s degree in Law and General Administration, the French expert began his career as the administrator of the Audiovisual Policy Unit in 1989 at the DG for Information, Communication, Culture and Audiovisual, and became Head of Unit there in 2002.

“The uniqueness of this project is that we are trying to respect diversity, implement solidarity, cooperate and create a political experiment. I see a major role for the EU as an enabler in this process, on top of what the Member States may do, but not as an entity which should capture one image, frame it and say this is European culture,” comments Xavier Troussard in his work for the General Directorate for Education and Culture in Brussels. The new head of the MEDIA programme works under his French fellow-countryman Michel Magnier who replaced Vladimir Sucha as the new Director of Culture and Creativity at the General Directorate for Education and Culture, at the beginning of this year.

Creative Europe is divided into the Culture, MEDIA and MEDIA Mundus branches. The new programme will continue to provide grants to support film development, training and distribution, as well as launching a new loan guarantee fund aimed at making it easier for the cultural and creative sectors to access funding. Creative Europe is expected to have an overall budget of around € 1.3 billion between 2014-2020, which is an increase of nearly 9% compared to the existing MEDIA and Culture programmes. The European Commission's proposal for Creative Europe still needs to be approved by the European Parliament.

On July 17th, the Representatives of the EU Member States agreed on the compromise text of the Regulation establishing the Creative Europe Programme with an aim to finalize the agreement with the European Parliament on this European Commission's proposal. The COREPER (consisting of representatives from the EU Member States) underlined the importance of finding an agreement as soon as possible. This decision will enable the European Commission to continue the preparations for the programme.