17/06/2003

The imminent enlargement of the European Union is worrying the French film industry whose representatives voiced their concerns and disappointment with the draft of the new European Constitution and especially the fact that decisions will be made as a result of a majority vote and not unanimity.

France’s most important industry guilds and associations, including ARP (Writers-Directors-Producers), Blic (the Film Industry Liaison Office) and Bloc (the French Film Organisations’ Liaison Office) sounded the alarm bells in an open letter they sent to Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the president of the Conference for the Future of Europe, and Romano Prodi, the EU Commission president on 28 May. The key issue worrying the French is the move to a qualified majority vote to decide international trade agreements in the audiovisual and cultural sectors, a project that will see a return to the Treaty of Nice which implemented the unanimity rule for all member states regarding issues of this nature.
Given that this "re-examination of each single state’s capacity to define freely their respective cultural policies is a regression that has no precedent, and which deliberately ignores the cultural dimension of Europe, especially since diversity is one of the Continent’s most important resources", France’s film industry organisations ask that the EU heads of state review this project, the approval of which would only benefit multinational communication corporations.

(Translated from French)