Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, what strikes a new Member, such as myself, on joining the European Parliament, and the Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sport, is that there is no coherent vision with regard to culture in Europe. I prefer to use the expression ‘vision’ rather than cultural ‘policy’. Those who call it cultural policy are referring to the debate or dispute that we could have. When we say, however, that there is no coherent vision, this quite simply means, for example, that cinema is dealt with from the point of view of industry, that music may feature in the budgetary lines, but that it all ends there, and that it is not clear how language or languages used in the theatre can be taken into account. That is why, Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I wanted to draft this own-initiative report. From my perspective, this own-initiative report was a means of reducing, in this vast European area of culture, the difference between industry and music which is so marked. If you are interested in languages, theatre and the performing arts, what one also discovers is that, fundamentally, these areas make up our heritage. The theatre and the performing arts make up the heritage of Europe, and it is as much our literary heritage as our political heritage, since there is no theatre which has not been shaped, both by the birth of democracy and by the life of the streets and the city. That is also why I believe that the issue of the theatre and performing arts is of great importance in the European area. When I began meeting performing arts professionals, what I heard first of all was their demand for freedom. They were adamant that they would not lose their freedom, or agree to us keeping checks on them, or creating an official art policy which would not be, in any shape or form, on the scale that they were seeking. That was the first thing that they said. The second thing that they touched upon was all the difficulties, the vast number of difficulties, such as double taxation, social and fiscal, but also the vast number of difficulties that they face when travelling. Because artists travel, they are already within Europe, they do not contemplate the issue of whether to stay in their own country or whether they are becoming uprooted, they travel and they need us to help them do this. This is a kind of reality that exists and that we must support. Of course, I do not believe – and this is increasingly evident with each passing day – that we can apply market and competition rules to the area of culture. We have seen this elsewhere: within the cinema, State aid is now recognised, even promoted or mimicked in countries other than those where this already exists. Even for the audiovisual industry therefore, we are aware of the importance of the role of State support. I believe that, for the performing arts and theatre in particular, it is the same thing, we must have State aid and this aid begins with the responsibility that the States must assume to facilitate the movement of individuals and productions in Europe, as well as to encourage training. In one respect, this is quite simply the conclusion that my report reaches. Member States must also make an effort to cooperate. Eventually, we might stop thinking in terms of a divide. I feel that, in our never-ending debate on culture, we still mean that either culture will be dealt with by the Community, or it will be a matter of subsidiarity, and therefore we must not touch it. I do not feel that this divide is of any use or that it helps in any way, and I believe, on the contrary, that if we go back to Article 151 which calls for cultural cooperation, this is exactly what we must use in order to think in terms of a Europe of culture and a Europe of the performing arts. As I said, there are barriers, such as double taxation, the lack of legislation, and a common technical vocabulary. There are, however, remedies as well, such as sub-titling, the White Paper which could help us to harmonise legislation – and I hope that the Commission will listen to us – databases, and the sharing of vocabulary. Perhaps we should also take the advice of experts, artists, who know of current developments within the industry, when it comes to making decisions. To sum up, ladies and gentlemen, I believe that we must think about the way in which culture will be preserved, dealt with properly in the Convention and the future Constitution. I think we must also think about the European Council resolution put forward in June, which proposed a plan for cooperation in the area of culture. I think that we will be able, with the European Commission and Parliament, to support the resolutions of the European Council as well.

Political group: GUE-NGL