The Cultural Committee's Draft Recommendation on this issue covers a wide area and touches on a number of more complicated debates. Our initial views, as set out below, broadly follow the headings set out in the document itself. In particular, the cultural industries should take account of globalisation of their market and should adapt to the gradual convergence within the sector. We can acknowledge the trend towards globalisation , in the sense of an increasing international rather than national market for cultural and information products. Globalisation is not, however, invariably benign, nor is it a trend that is beyond modification or resistance in some contexts.
Cultural industries involve, by definition, criteria other than the purely economic.
In the audiovisual sector, there has been increasing concern about the structural dominance of the US in the world market and its potential ability to swamp the European programme market with programme stocks that appear relatively cheap, having already covered their costs in their vast domestic market. We therefore believe that globalisation should not be noted uncritically. We remain convinced that a critical view of globalisation is justified and indeed necessary, and would like to see this reflected in the Council of Europe's document. This does not mean that we advocate reversion to a narrow and futile nationalism, merely that the imperatives of the global market can and should be channelled, modified and resisted when necessary. The Paper recommends that the cultural industries should 'adapt their policies' to the gradual convergence of their spheres of activities.