Culture shock

With France now at the EU’s helm, Eamonn Bates asks if Paris is still a champion of Europe’s cultural diversity

Once upon a time, France was synonymous with the defence of European culture, notably against the tidal wave of mass-produced English language material that threatens to drown creation in local languages and traditions.

This was epitomised by the TV without frontiers directive in the 1980s. The French argued vociferously for quotas on cheap third-country content to bolster local, European talent. Culture, France always argued, is not a good to be traded. Rather, it is fundamental to our European identity, inappropriate to measure uniquely in market terms. That philosophy appears to be at an end.

In October 2005, internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy persuaded the European commission to rush out a recommendation on the system of collective cross-border management of music copyright in the internet and digital fields. The aim was to liberalise the internal market in this domain. While there is certainly scope for more competition and new collecting models to meet the demands of technologies that do not easily respect national borders, the approach advocated by the commission is crude, simplistic and high risk.

It has set in train a process that is on course to demolish forever the system of collection of author’s rights in Europe, precisely on the premise that the only thing that counts is the business dimension. It grotesquely privileges the interests of the major music publishers and the biggest European collecting societies at the expense of everyone else.

Critics that have highlighted the negative consequences of the recommendation not only for cultural diversity but also for its negative impact on competition and there have been many, including a unanimous European parliament, who have simply been ignored by the commission.

Traditionally, this is where one would have expected France to take centre stage – but it is silent. At first sight, this French silence is remarkable given that the concept of author’s rights and solidarity between and equal treatment of authors, composers and publishers when it comes to collection and payment of royalties are, in fact, French inventions that date back over a century.

The French model of bringing rights holders together in collecting societies to carry out on a collective basis the collection and distribution of authors’ rights has been emulated all over continental Europe and beyond. Such laxity is simply not, well, French. Dig a little deeper and we see why. The national collecting society, SACEM, is set to become one of the three big beneficiaries of the commission’s initiative, at the expense of the smaller players.

Is this tangible evidence of a new France under President Sarkozy, ready to waive European cultural leadership in return for a larger profit share in the US-dominated entertainment business? A recommendation is not legally binding but in this case its market effect has been as good as legislation.

The four major global music publishers are largely owned today by Anglo-American business interests. They control the most commercially successful (English language) repertoires that dominate the music business worldwide. They are interested in profit first and foremost, not culture or cultural diversity. At the culture council on 22 May, Dutch minister for culture Ronald Plasterk made an impassioned plea for a rethink of the 2005 recommendation. He was joined by many of his colleagues from smaller member states but there was no sympathy from his French counterpart. The French minister merely counselled prudence and inaction for fear of disrupting the creative industries.

This, of course, is part of the game plan of the big business interests now pulling the strings in SACEM and the other large collecting societies. Along with the commission, they are crassly playing for time to allow the market to reach a point of no return.

It is a bitter irony that the commission’s attempt to dismantle the highly regulated national music rights monopolies is resulting in the creation of four mega-monopolies at European level that are entirely unregulated.

How can this be good for competition? More freedom for the rights holder is what the commission desired. In practice, only the major publishers will really be able to exploit that as they go it alone on a massive scale, leaving SME collecting societies and their SME members struggling to maintain infrastructure to provide basic services.

Unable to offer the global repertoire, the excluded collecting societies will have little or no scope to offer an attractive package to major users of music, while royalty avoidance for use of minority repertoire is bound to rise. The rebound effect on the lesser known author and composer will be higher costs for the same basic services and lower revenues – second-class citizen status.

SACEM and Universal Music Publishing were among the last to do an exclusive deal. The cynic might say that had this failed the Elysée would have been mobilised. For now, however, it appears that the natural defender of Europe’s cultural diversity has succumbed to market pressure and narrow defence of French interest alone.