Mr President, the Constitutional Treaty reformulates in one of its articles the cultural dimension of Europe and this constitutional foundation expresses a clear political position. Namely that European culture is a fundamental component of the European economic and social model which is needed if the political venture of the European Union is to be completed. It is the duty of us, as Members of the European Parliament, to convert this constitutional formulation to an active, effective policy. I consider that, with the report on cultural industries, we are making such a step. We have expanded our policy horizontally with certain important admissions which have to do with the conditions of production and consumption of cultural products and services by European citizens. We demonstrated during the preparation of this report and in the dialogue held in the Committee on Culture with all the honourable Members, and I must thank them for that, the central importance of creation and of creators as a basic source of the added value of cultural products. We took account of the important economic dimension of culture nowadays, its role in the economic development of regions and towns and its contribution to GDP and to the employment sector. We noted the revolutionary changes brought about by new technologies in many of the sectors of the cultural industries, such as in music, in publications and in the audiovisual sector. We discussed in detail the importance of the competitiveness of European products, compared with those from other countries of the world, the inequalities of the international trade and the close link between cultural heritage and tourism. European citizens consume millions of copies of disks and books and buy millions of tickets to the cinema and concerts every year. All this constitutes their cultural diet, thereby shaping their profile and their cultural identity. The citizens also watch television programmes. They receive information and influence on the Internet from a massive quantity of material which we refer to as content. In these ways they select, cultivate and promote one form or another of art and culture, different aesthetics and quality, in close dependency on education and their personal development. It is a complex cultural process which characterises the daily life of citizens and we should not ignore the broad political importance and weight which it has. In addition, enlargement gives Europe an even greater cultural dimension, together with diversity. The internal market is growing. Creators’ works must overcome a number of obstacles, such as problems in connection with distribution and promotion and extensive piracy, in order to find a way of reaching the European public. What we are looking for is European added value and that also applies to the thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises working in the various sectors. In order to address all this, we have made a series of proposals to the Commission. They are numerous, but I shall comment on just three. First, the need for a definition of cultural industries and the sectors they include. We need here to analyse the cultural, commercial and economic dimension in order to include the sectors in the definition of cultural or creative industries, as they are called in certain countries. I think this will give us a better statistical picture, which we do not have at present. Our second call on the Commission is to map the cultural industries at European level. We are calling for it to concentrate on cultural, economic, legal, technological and educational aspects, to include employment, intellectual property, the competitiveness network, new products and exports. Finally, we consider that it is very important to have a Green Paper in order to promote the coordination of the Member States and the regions in the sector of the cultural industries, so that obstacles can be analysed, solutions suggested and a way found for the public and private sectors to cooperate, to promote competitiveness and to improve European citizens’ access to culture. I would like to believe that this report is just the beginning and that the Commission will respond not only to this specific report but also to the signs of the times, by taking the necessary initiatives with which, it should be added, the Council has also been preoccupied recently.

Political group: PSE