Jan Loisen

The WTO and the Audiovisual Sector Economic Free Trade vs Cultural Horse Trading

In this article the authors raise historical and legal status questions concerning the audiovisual dossier as discussed within the framework of the World Trade Organization. This implies an overview, first, of the rules applying directly to the audiovisual sector; second, of the liberalization agreements concerning telecommunications; and third, of the rules concerning copyright (TRIPs). In anticipation of the discussions in the new multilateral negotiation round - launched at the end of last year - the main argument of the article is that the interference of the WTO in the audiovisual and related sectors is irreversible, but also partly unpredictable.

Introduction: European Media Policy as a Complex Maze of Actors, Regulatory Instruments and Interests

Everybody agrees on the mounting relevance of European media policy, also referred to as European audiovisual and media policy. By this we do not mean the individual media policies of the separate member states of the European Union (EU) but rather media policies elaborated at the level of the EU. Admittedly, these policies are developed in close collaboration with the member states. As can be read on the European Commission’s (EC’s) website,1 European media policy is implemented by the EC in four ways. First, there is the harmonization of rules applicable to audiovisual media services. These rules are part of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (a 2007 amended version of the 1989 Television without Frontiers Directive), which is transposed into over 28 national and subnational jurisdictions. Their main objective is to achieve an internal market in audiovisual media services while protecting the interests of minors and enforcing public interest objectives, such as diversity and quality. Technical standardization alsof Alls under these objectives of creating an internal market for communcation and information technologies, infrastructure and devices. Second, there are media-specific programs to stimulate the production and distribution of audiovisual media services. The industrial support program MEDIA, which is designed to add to the professionalization of the film and television industries, is the most important support program. Third, the EC formulates policies on media literacy and media pluralism.

Editors’ Introduction: Private Television in Europe — A New Beginning or the Beginning of the End?

In 1984, pay-television channel Canal+ was launched in France; in 1986, free-to-air channels M6 and La Cinq started broadcasting. On 16 January 1985, President of the French Republic Francois Mitterand announced his willingness to privatise TF1, the biggest public service television station in France (Dyson, 1990: 133). Several elements accounted for the liberalisation of the French television market and the president’s pronouncement on private television. Indeed, whereas there was no intent to abandon the system of public broadcasting altogether and to relinquish the substantive advertising revenues that financed it, the French were in general favouring private television. Public television was considered overly dull (Donders, 2012: 12; Van Den Bulck, 2007: 65-74), whereas private television — perhaps now suffering from a conservative image — represented something fresh and new for French audiences and those elsewhere in Western Europe. Also, personal relations between French elite political classes and those seeking profit in private television pushed for an opening of French television to market forces. Having said that, there were also many fears about the possible excesses of the, sometimes alleged, inferior, trashy and merely entertaining programming of private television.

Competing Perspectives? WTO and UNESCO on Cultural Diversity in Global Trade

The critical celebration of ten years of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (UNESCO, 2005a) coincides with the 20-year anniversary of that other global policy institution dealing with trade and culture, the World Trade Organization (WTO). Possibly both celebrations will be rather tempered. On the one hand, the fairly rapid negotiation of the 2005 Convention has been followed by slow implementation. On the other hand, WTO members appear unable to find sufficient common ground to finalize the Doha round of negotiations that began in November 2001. In terms of their interinstitutional dialectics in the field of trade and culture, or particularly on the issue of audiovisual services as they are called in the WTO, hardly any change has apparently been realized. This chapter therefore looks back to and takes stock of competing ideas and perspectives on media and cultural diversity in global trade within UNESCO and WTO. In tracing the development of different perspectives on trade and culture, we reconstruct the history of the WTO/UNESCO interinstitutional dialectics by focusing on a number of milestone events and debates. Drawing on Douglass North’s conceptual framework for understanding institutional change, and the persistence of informal rules especially, we argue that notwithstanding the trade and culture debate’s complexity, manifold tensions, and often deeply competing perspectives, the final analysis is not that complicated and allows for optimism.

Leading by Example? European Union Implementation of Cultural Diversity in Internal and External Audiovisual Policies

This article aims to assess how the European Union (EU) deals with cultural diversity in the audiovisual sector in both its policy discourse and practice. The underlying question guiding the analysis is whether the EU commits to implementing policies to enhance cultural diversity. A first part gives an overview of the concept’s development in time and in response to a specific political and economic context. The second part addresses implementation of the concept in the EU’s internal market project and its external trade relations by means of an analysis of four distinct policy areas: the evolution of the main underlying regulatory framework; European support programmes for the audiovisual sector; competition policies targeting the sector; and dealing with the audiovisual sector in external trade relations. On the basis of this analysis, we aim to evaluate in a final concluding part the coherence of the overall EU approach and the prospects and pitfalls for increased cultural diversity in the audiovisual sector in Europe. We argue that the strong focus of the EU on cultural diversity in its discourse has led to some steps of policy implementation which generates a fledgling positive, albeit fragile and imperfect, dynamic for cultural diversity.

“Cultural Diversity” at UNESCO: A Trajectory

This chapter combines the experience of the lead author, Galia Saouma, who writes as a practitioner, and the more academic perspectives of the second author, Yudhishthir Isar, who has had a foot in both camps. The first served as the Secretary of the 2005 UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity, from its entry into force in 2007 until the end of 2011, after a long professional career as an international civil servant in the cultural department of UNESCO. The second author was also a cultural official of that organization for almost three decades, but has been an academic analyst and independent cultural policy advisor since 2002. Both authors draw upon their previous praxis yet also stand back from it analytically, as they trace the itinerary of the term “cultural diversity” in UNESCO.