19 March 2021

Include culture in your national recovery strategies

Include culture in your national recovery strategies and reactivate cultural life in Europe. This is the message more than 110 signatories, GESAC included, are sending to Member States and government authorities today.

Read the letter in full below.

INCLUDE CULTURE IN YOUR NATIONAL RECOVERY STRATEGIES AND REACTIVATE CULTURAL LIFE IN EUROPE

Heads of State and Government, Ministers for European Affairs, Ministers for Finance, Ministers for Culture President of the European Commission

President of the European Parliament President of the Council of the EU European Commissioners

As a powerful vector for the future of Europe and a key asset for the continent’s social, environmental, and economic sustainability, culture is more than a sector that needs urgent support. Culture is key to healing wounds in times of crisis, to keeping our societies together, and to making them more resilient. For these reasons, we believe it should be at the heart of Europe’s recovery from the pandemic.

Ensuring that culture is explicitly included in the National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) will help secure both the future of the sector and its important contribution to Europe’s future.

Following the formal adoption of the regulation establishing the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) in February and the rollout of the vaccination campaign across Europe, the EU is readying itself to reopen and recover. The European cultural community, however, cannot share the enthusiasm, for we do not yet see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Only one other sector – air transport – has suffered the same economic impact as the cultural and creative sectors, which experienced a 31% drop in turnover in 2020 (in some sub-sectors up to 90%), more than tourism and the automotive industry. (EY, “Rebuilding Europe. The cultural and creative economy before and after the COVID-19 crisis”, January 2021).

With cultural activities still halted, cultural venues and heritage sites remaining closed, cross-border cultural exchanges stalled, millions of jobs frozen or wiped out, and many talents forced to leave the sector, 2021 promises to be another trying year.

We, 110+ representatives of the multifaceted European cultural ecosystem, call on the Member States and the European Commission to secure a future for culture and cultural life in Europe. One year after the breakout of the pandemic, we have the opportunity to carefully evaluate safe reopenings
and a potential first step in the sector’s recovery.

We ask the Member States to reactivate cultural life in Europe, while keeping existing and putting in place new dedicated support schemes far beyond stabilisation of the situation. This will help rebuild confidence of both cultural communities and citizens, ensure a smooth resumption of activities and offer hope to the millions of Europeans whose lives have become barren, devoid of cultural and social connection.

Crucially, by now, the majority of EU countries have presented the drafts of their National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) to the European Commission, starting a time of informal dialogue and exchanges in the weeks to come, before the formal deadline of 30 April.

This is a key moment to fine-tune and validate those plans.

• We reiterate our call made on 30 October 2020 and urge the EU and its Member States to fully include culture in each and every National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), and dedicate, at the very least, 2% of the RRF envelope for culture. We have seen strong political will, as expressed among others by the European Parliament, to put culture as a priority sector when using funds from Next Generation EU. It is now time to translate this commitment in the NRRPs.

• In addition, we call on the Member States to continuously involve and engage the representatives of their cultural communities and civil society organisations in the design and implementation of the NRRPs, as indicated in the European Commission guidelines for the preparation of the national recovery and resilience plans. Long-term structural support to rebuild the European cultural ecosystem needs to be co-developed, involving all relevant stakeholders, both public and private.

Reinvigorating the cultural ecosystem not only offers hope to millions of workers who saw their jobs eradicated or endangered by the pandemic, it can offer new meaning and purpose to all Europeans and the European project.

Let us put culture at the heart of Europe’s recovery.

Policies

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence brings about many new opportunities for our lives, including in the field of culture and creativity, but its applications also raise a number of ethical and legal questions due to their wide-spread uncontrolled and unchecked usage.

Policies

Music Streaming

Music streaming has unquestionably become the predominant means of enjoying music, replacing traditional physical media and expanded far beyond the live sector by providing user-friendly, high quality, and affordable access to the largest possible repertoire anytime, anywhere, online, or offline.

Songs and compositions are at the heart of this thriving market, which counts 524 million users on subscription-based music services globally, reaches more than 2 billion users including the streaming on UGC platforms, and offers more than 70 million tracks from approximately 8 million artists.

Yet, the authors and composers cannot benefit adequately from this success, and the debate over unfairness of this market is gaining traction across Europe and around the world.

There is a need to look more closely at how songwriters and composers are connected to this thriving economy and what can be done to improve their currently neglected situation.

Read below to find out more about the Music Streaming market.

Policies

Buy-out contracts: a dangerous threat to European creators

European music creators (composers, lyricists etc.) are being forced to forsake thousands of euros in future earnings by draconian ‘work made for hire’ (WMH) and buy-out contracts.

Online audiovisual services and broadcasters that are mainly US-based are forcing music creators to accept such contracts, which enforce a one-time payment in exchange for their rights.

Given the worldwide popularity of shows and series on platforms like Netflix, Amazon, Disney etc., and their replay value, the audiovisual market represents an important revenue stream for creators. Soundtracks alone are part and parcel of series and often attract a similar amount of popularity, massively boosting sales, streams and the worldwide fanbase of their authors.

Read below to find out how video on demand (VOD) platforms and broadcasters are circumventing EU law and what can be done about it.

Policies

Authors’ societies & the collective management model

Authors’ societies are hugely beneficial to both authors (creators), users (platforms and services), and the broader public.

Beyond benefiting these different groups, authors’ societies also support the broader cultural ecosystem by funding and promoting cultural and creative initiatives.

Below are five key benefits to authors’ societies and the collective management model.

Policies

The Copyright Directive

In April 2019, the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market was formally adopted, a change that will positively transform authors’ rights throughout the EU. Each member state now has until 7 June 2021 to transpose the Directive into their respective national law.

This reform is an opportunity to address pressing issues for authors in the Digital Single Market and will promote the growth of Europe’s creative and cultural industries (CCIs) – a major driver of Europe’s economy.

One of the biggest achievements of this new piece of legislation was to address the
‘Transfer of Value’ problem, a priority issue for all European creators.

Below are some of the Directive’s key areas that will affect creators and those who profit from their work.