Why we need European cultural policies: the impact of EU ...

`Eventually, a solution was found, so that current audio-visual legislation statesthat harmonization with Television without frontiers Directive (Art. 5 and 6)shall be effective no later than 1 January 2007, the expected date of accessionof Romania.’(Romania)The European Commission carefully monitored the negotiations of future candidatecountries when they were joining the World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as when they werenegotiating other free trade agreements,77 in order to make sure that the special treatment ofaudio-visual services, as defended within the WTO by the European Commission, was respectedby potential members of the EU. However, discussion about the impact of the liberalization oftrade, particularly in the audio-visual sector, although it has slowly spread to the countries ofcentral and eastern Europe, has not yet emerged as a priority, and countries are very slowlyintroducing measures whose aim is to intervene in their cultural markets.Taxation policyThe questionnaire asked three questions seeking information about changes to tax systems – boththe VAT and general tax rules – and the effect this might have had on cultural policies.Taxation is one of the clearest instances of another policy field, having an impact on culture. Forthis reason, negotiations about special treatment for specific goods or services have been moretransparent and the need for the cultural community to get involved has been quite obvious.When the European Union originally set out its regulations for harmonization of VAT rates, itpermitted member countries time to adjust to the new tax regime. The transition countries,however, had to adopt most of these regulations before joining the EU. During negotiations, itwas theoretically possible to negotiate some special provisions or delays in applying certain rules,but because most countries do not consider culture as a priority, not surprisingly, few of themmade special requests for culture, at the expense of other sectors, usually considered to be `moreimportant’. It was interesting to note that Poland 78 was the only country which managed tomaintain zero VAT for books. Generally speaking, when joining the Union, transition countries hadlittle scope to ask for reduced or zero VAT rates for cultural goods and services.79The Compendium of cultural policies and trends in Europe offered updated information about taxsystems, including comparative tables giving an overview of tax rates and regulations in various50Part 2 The impact of EU enlargement: results of the survey of researchers and policy-makers