May
2002
Contents:
·
GATS: A growing threat to culture
·
GATS in Sweden
·
Culture and trade: An update from Australia
This edition of the INCD newsletter was intended to be a look at music and globalization but as is often the case, things shifted and the recent developments with the GATS negotiations have taken precedence. There is, however, an excellent series of articles written by INCD Steering Committee member Richard Letts on the subject of music and globalization that are available on the web site of the Music Council of Australia http://www.mca.org.au, under Music Forum.
GATS: A growing threat to culture
This is an excerpt from a longer paper on the history and implications of the General Agreement on Trade in Services. For the complete text (in English only), please go to:
http://www.incd.net/paper03.html
While some challenges of the existing GATS are hypothetical and have not been tested in practice, far greater challenges to cultural policy are likely to result from the ongoing and future negotiations.
Since the stated objective of GATS is to liberalize trade in services, bilateral and multilateral pressure will be used to expand the number of listed services in each country. Furthermore, a firm timetable has now been agreed for the GATS talks. Under the “request-offer” negotiating approach, countries have until 30 June 2002 to table specific requests to other countries for measures they wish to see removed, or sectors of economic activity they wish the other country to list. The recipient country has until 31 March 2003 to respond to that request with an “offer” of those things it is prepared to commit.
All of this is part of a comprehensive new round of talks, optimistically scheduled to conclude by January 2005. With a greatly expanded negotiating agenda, the opportunity increases for governments to trade-off cultural policies in return for progress in other areas such as agriculture, natural resources or textiles. This places cultural measures at greater risk in most countries.
In a paper tabled in 2000, the United States has already announced that it seeks additional commitments in the audiovisual sector. It proposes to use appropriate GATS rules to protect “the sector’s specific sensitivities.” In particular it suggests that recognition be granted for “the use of carefully circumscribed subsidies for specifically defined purposes...” The European Commission and others have rejected this US position. But, in tabling a sector paper in response, the Swiss government attempts to position itself as an intermediary between the US and Europe. Brazil has tabled a proposal that audiovisual services should be covered, although it also seeks discussion on competition provisions “to address unfair trade practices in the sector.”
The draft requests the European Commission is developing for presentation to other countries have been widely leaked. In its requests both to Canada and the United States, the EC and its member states include a number of cultural policy issues. For example, it questions US restrictions against one company owning both newspapers and radio or television stations in the same market, and it seeks removal of MFN exemption on one-way satellite transmission of Direct To Home and Direct Broadcast Satellite television services and digital audio services. From Canada, the EC seeks removal of restrictions against or limitations on foreign ownership of cultural firms, including film distributors; commitments on advertising and publishing services; and removal of certain restrictions and regulations in wholesaling and retailing activities related to books, magazines, sound recordings and videos.
There is no doubt that as the negotiations proceed on the GATS, cultural issues will be front and centre.
Garry Neil
Coordinator
3 May 2002
· GATS in Sweden
A meeting on the
implications of the GATS on a variety of sectors was arranged by Forum Syd (an
organization working with development in developing countries), Attac Sweden,
the Stockholm branch of a teachers union and KLYS. About a hundred people
attended the meeting. The INCD contributed the policy paper GATS: A growing
threat to culture by Garry Neil.
Åse Kleveland,
director of the Swedish Film Institute, said that according to the Scandinavian
model, everybody has the right to express themselves and a right to cultural
valuables. Democracy is a way of living and a prerequisite for democracy is a
free and equitable media. Sixty-two percent of films in Sweden are from the USA
while European films are distributed by many small companies and require
increasing cooperation to ensure exposure. In the GATS there is no general
exception for culture but in article 151 in the EU treaty, it states that each
country shall be able to develop a cultural policy of their own, leading to an
inherent contradiction. However, we will have to have superior goals about
cultural diversity to ensure the future existence of the cultural dimension. A
free market must not be a goal but an instrument for social and economic
benefits for health and culture. For small companies and small organizations it
is very hard to influence EU directives or the GATS treaty. We must not make it
so difficult to have an influence that people loose their faith in the
possibility to do so. GATS must be a concern for everybody, not only the trade
department.
Representatives from the other organizations spoke
about the difficulty of predicting the future implications of commitments made
today, the need to protect developing countries as their governments race to
make commitments and the growing power of corporations. Overall, the
organizations felt that the GATS process has thus far been undemocratic and
requires a greater level of transparency and responsiveness.
Bernt Lindberg
KLYS, Sweden
·
Culture and trade: An update from Australia
These are excerpts from a longer article by INCD Steering
Committee member Richard Letts on the state of international trade and culture
in the latest edition of the Music Council of Australia’s magazine Music Forum.
www.mca.org.au
Globalisation’s
effects on the arts might be thought of in two categories: firstly, those
arising from the evolutionary processes of globalisation as it is driven,
mostly, by technology. Examples might be the domination of world sound
recording production by five multinational corporations (holding 90% of record
sales in Australia) or, more benignly for us, the growth of foreign film
production in Australia. They are not all
bad…
The other
effects come out of regulatory or legal arrangements to enforce “trade
liberalisation” (free trade). These are organised under the WTO or through
regional or bilateral treaties, such as the bilateral treaty the Australian
government wants to negotiate with the USA. (…)
The USA,
whose largest export sector is audio-visual services and which is regarded
almost universally as the major
threat, has proposed that audiovisual services (e.g. film) should be fully
covered by the General Agreement on Trade in Services. This probably would see
an end to the Australian film production industry and perhaps, by extension,
the music production industry. The US makes a similar claim for software, even
though the EU warns that some software clearly has cultural purposes. There is
a number of other threats of a highly technical nature that could have
devastating results.
But perhaps
the darkest of all is the proposed “Relationship Between Trade and Investment”
-- essentially creating a dramatic
rebirth of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), an OECD initiative
that brought down such protest that it was withdrawn. Says the INCD (Neil, WTO
and Culture, November 2001): “To the
extent the outcome of the new WTO negotiations on investment approaches the
agreement abandoned by the OECD in 1997, the results could be catastrophic for
culture.”
“For instance, it could force a re-evaluation
of a significant number of cultural policies, including:
·
prohibitions, limits or restrictions on foreign
ownership in the cultural industries; [Australia has such restrictions on media
ownership]
·
public service broadcasters and other public
institutions, since these might be perceived as unfair
competitors for private foreign investors; [in Australia, these include the
ABC and SBS]
·
regulations that discriminate against foreign
broadcasting or publishing interests; [e.g. in Australia, the local content
requirements which oblige TV and radio broadcasters to include minimum
percentages of Australian material]
·
co-production treaties; [Australia has some bilateral
treaties, to facilitate film production]
·
even financial subsidy programs if these
discriminate against foreign firms or individuals...” [this could mean, for instance,
that arts grants are permitted only if foreign applicants are eligible on the
same basis as Australians!]
The
International Music Council (IMC) has made music and globalisation its priority
for the current biennium, and has created a committee to take action. The
committee will seek ways to support local musics in the face of globalisation,
to build cultural diversity into educational curricula, and to act in the
international sphere in various ways, e.g. by supporting the thrust of the INCD
action to create a Convention, and by assisting local musics to find their way
into the global marketplace. I (Richard
Letts) am chairing the latter subcommittee. We met in Manila a few weeks ago,
and I will report in future issues of Music
Forum on any interesting developments.
One thing I know we need to know: any actual examples of harm or benefit to music arising from globalisation. You may be able to help by sending examples to me at the Music Council (ozmuisc@zeta.org.au ).
Warsaw
Federation of European Film Directors (FERA), Euro-Mei and the Association of Polish Filmmakers held a conference on the audio-visual sector and EU enlargement in Warsaw, Poland. The 150 delegates put forth the Warsaw Declaration, stating “…We appeal for a cinema directive that would enable the constant growth of European and national cinema regardless of political and economic influences, a directive that would contribute to sustaining of cultural diversity.”
The Korean Coalition for Cultural Diversity (KCCD) was launched May 7 in Seoul, bringing together sixteen Korean cultural groups including the Coalition for Cultural Diversity in Moving Images, members of which participated in the INCD’s Lucerne meeting. The Korean film industry has been mobilized around the issue of cultural diversity since its screen quota system came under attack and has lead this new initiative. The INCD congratulates the Korean Coalition for Cultural Diversity and looks forward to hearing more about its activities.
INCD Coordinator Garry Neil will be in South Africa at the end of May to present the draft Convention on Cultural Diversity to the INCP’s Working Group on Cultural Diversity and Globalization. He will be speaking at a public forum organized by the Performing Arts Network of South Africa on Thursday, May 23 at the Centre for the Book. For more information, please contact art27m@iafrica.com .