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

IPR legislation into line with World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and World TradeOrganization (WTO) regulations, at the same time making preparations to meet relevant EUdirectives. As with the audio-visual and media sectors, legislation in most of these countries wasamended several times during the transition 88 and only the most recent changes were broughtabout by the need to harmonize with the acquis communautaire.Copyright has generally been perceived as an inseparable part of cultural policies, and specificinterests of the cultural sector have usually been taken into account. Much information aboutthe most important changes in the IPR legislation can be found in the European Commission’s`progress reports’ as well as in the Compendium of cultural policies and trends in Europe(ERICarts/Council of Europe 2005).According to the Compendium most countries reported that they have been following the civillaw droit d’auteur tradition.89 They have made changes to every aspect of their IPR legislationdirectly relevant for culture such as:■ extending rights for up to 70 years after the author’s death■ regulating resale of IPR products within the European Economic Area 90■ changing rental and lending rights.In spite of the various Europe-wide regulations, the way in which some important aspects of theIPR relevant for culture are regulated is still very varied. Examples of this include public lendingrights and also coordination between the systems for managing and collecting the rights of artistsfrom different EU countries. What’s more, intellectual property rights have been one of the mostdebated, and sometimes controversial topics.91As with audio-visual legislation, where the revision of the Directive Television without frontiersis underway, the field of intellectual property is being constantly revised primarily in response todevelopments in digital technologies.Finally: regionalization and the `Copenhagen Criteria’There were two other issues, which although not included in the survey, have been impinging oncultural policy-making.The first, which seems to have been connected indirectly with the accession process, is thechange of territorial, or regional, organization of new member states. The Compendium of culturalpolicies and trends in Europe stated that EU membership would compel Hungary and Slovenia tofinalize a new territorial organization. First Hungary:`The EU membership will compel Hungary into finalizing the (probably seven)regions and give them real administrative power, including competence overregional cultural policies. The same reason has speeded up the formation of 167so-called small or micro-regions: these are not yet full partners of the central60Part 2 The impact of EU enlargement: results of the survey of researchers and policy-makers