Appendix 6 - International Music Council

The European Community will make no liberalisation commitments on audiovisual services
in the present WTO round. The Commission has recently confirmed this view explicitly in a
public statement.
On the other side, the EU Community law prohibits any state aid (subsidies), unless they
can be justified, for example, if they serve to provide services of general interest, such as
public service broadcasting. This legal framework routinely invites commercial media
companies to challenge the activities and the financing of public service broadcasters on
European level. Consequently, there is a growing case law on the decisions of the European
Commission scrutinising the funding schemes of public service broadcasters in the Member
States, and, lately, a tendency by the Commission to limit the activities of public service
broadcasters, in particular in the new on-demand media. The Commission’s increasingly
critical approach to public service broadcasting in the digital environment reflects its
general emphasis on free markets in the information and communication sectors (ICT), an
emphasis also evident in the decision taken by the Barroso Commission in late 2004 to deal
with media policy issues in the context of the Communities ICT policies instead of, as had
been the case in the past, in the context of the Community’s cultural policies.
(Source: Dr. Verena Wiedemann, LL.M., Brussels, „What the UNESCO Convention
“Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions” means for the media”)
The clearest example for the problems caused by GATS are the public broadcasters. In
many government budgets for culture, they are the biggest posts, which means, that the
public broadcasting companies receive money past the market. "Free traders" see this as a
distortion of economical competition. To follow their demands could mean to abolish
public broadcasters (that are the main providers for broadcasted musical diversity) or reset
on the principles of the free market. From their perspective, everything hiindering free trade
needs to be abolished. The sharpest counter-argument is, that we would all "be struck dead
by stupid us-american pop music" and all high quality culture like e.g. classical music or
traditional music will decline or become homogenous and uniform, because the principles
of a free market seem to support the big and destroy the small and marginal.
Implementation of GATS letterly could result in all orchestras (of classical music) having
to finance themselves, all governmental financing and subsidizing needing to be abolished,
the domestic music market (above all smaller music publishers and record companies)
being destroyed - which would not only mean a loss of jobs, but also loss of musical
diversity -, promotion of export being cancelled, the public cultural landscape (orchestras,
theatres etc.) as well as networks like the national music councils not receiving any money
any more, the authorities not being allowed to call any prizes. It could also mean to abolish
promotional measures like social security insurance for artists and reduced tax rates.
NATIONSPECIFIC PROBLEMS:
1. Lack of ressources and economical stagnation or even decline force some nations
like e.g. Albania, to offer their cultural goods and products to private investors or
foreign institutions.
2. The ingnorance of the state in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine to the forthcoming
extinction of local music traditions. (S. 6.3)
3. Nationalism or dictatorship endangers musical diversity (S. 1 und 4.1)
4. In Germany the collection Society GEMA has a monopoly status, which is seen as
an obstacle hindering diversity. The point system used by the GEMA to collect fees
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