25/05/2005

During the Cannes Film Festival, the directors of all the European national film agencies gathered and published a common declaration to reassert ‘the necessity for public funding of film in Europe and the need for greater clarity, coherence and certainty in the rules drawn up by the European Commission’ which govern this public funding, for these rules which came into force in 2001, are about to expire, in June 2007.

The authors of the declaration start by reminding the Commission that in March 2003, they asked for long-term guarantees for ‘the maintenance and evolution of systems of state aids for the cinema’. At the end of 2003, they rejected proposals issued by the Commission for the adjustment of the specific compatibility criteria ; as a consequence, the criteria set in 2001 will continue to apply until the 30th of June 2007. In the new declaration, the directors of the European national film agencies and other national representatives from all 25 members of the Union insisted on several points. The first point was the importance of setting European criteria to support the development of proper film industries in the 10 new member states. Then, a common policy should be implemented to cover all aspects of the cinema : diversity, strong markets, competitivity, competition, the society of information, regional development, and public interest. Measures should create good conditions for the production, the circulation, and the accessibily of European films in their countries and the rest of Europe. There should also be more national and regional aids, for the cinema is the expression par excellence of cultural diversity, therefore it should not depend solely on the market.

The common declaration also underlines the dangers of making over-simplified artificial distinctions in terms of support by separating ‘cultural’ (or ‘difficult’) films from ‘commercial’ ones, and points out the fact that restricting public funding to a pre-determined percentage of the costs is hardly relevant. Indeed, there is no country in the European Union where the market is big enough and efficient enough to ensure, without any public help, dynamic and varied production, distribution, and exhibition. Furthermore, not only do the directors of all European national film agencies approve of public support to technical branches of the industry and state aids to the cinema —so long as they are no hindrance to the circulation of the supported films all over Europe—, but they also unanimously reject the idea according to which ‘territorialising’ support is against the free circulation of films —on the contrary, local aids help maintaining and developing the cinema in Europe. The European Commission should therefore, not try to set limits, but help making all public policies regarding the cinema consistent with one another instead of operating a distinction between ‘cultural’ and ‘industrial’ support which is not true to the facts, considering support schemes generally cover both.

Authors of the declaration
Filmförderungsanstalt (Germany)
Österreichisches Filminstitut (Austria)
Centre du Cinéma et de l'Audiovisuel de la Communauté française (Belgium)
Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds (Belgium)
Services culturels du ministère de l'éducation et de la culture (Cyprus)
Danish Film Institute (Denmark)
Instituto de la Cinematografia y de las Artes Audiovisuales (Spain)
Estonian Film Foundation (Estonia)
Finnish Film Foundation (Finland)
Centre National de la Cinématographie (France)
Greek Film Center (Greece)
National Film Office (Hungary)
Irish Film Board (Ireland)
Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali - Direzione Generale per il Cinema (Italy)
National Film Center (Latvia)
Departement du cinéma-ministère de la culture (Lituania)
Film Fund Luxembourg (Luxembourg)
Maltese Film Commission (Malta)
Nederlands Fonds v.d. Film (The Netherlands)
Département du cinéma-ministère de la culture (Poland)
Insituto do Cinema Audiovisual e Multimedia (Portugal)
Film Council (UK)
Departement du cinéma-ministère de la culture (Slovaquia)
National Film Foundation (Slovenia)
Swedish Film Institute (Sweden)
Czech Film Chamber (Czech Republic)

(Translated from French)