Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-09-05-Speech-2-240"
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"en.20000905.13.2-240"2
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"Mr President, first and foremost, I must apologise on behalf of my colleague Mrs Echerer, who felt unwell and has gone to see the doctor. So if I go over my allotted time slightly, I would like to pick up some of her speaking time. Needless to say, I can only congratulate Mr Veltroni on his first-rate report, which, as someone has just said, has come at a good time. In the past, as well as the present, Europe has taken a fairly progressive stance on the telecommunications front, when it comes to a European single market, and we are none the worse for that. I believe it is high time for us to take a look at the content side of things, because, unfortunately, Europe is still lagging behind a little in this respect. It is a marvellous idea to create a whole network that responds to the requirements of convergence, and which enables the public to receive information via a GSM, a computer or a television, but we must also be aware of what sort of information it is and, above all – and I am also thinking about what may be of positive value to our audiovisual industry – we must beware of being inundated by American products alone. After all, the fact is that our European cinema, as I have said on other occasions, is light years behind, and we cannot allow this situation to continue indefinitely, particularly in the light of the history of European cinema.
I am not calling for quotas. I am calling for a European investment fund to be set up, which will enable the creative producers we have in Europe to at long last enter into real competition with America, in a manner which fully meets with the requirements of the free market. No, this is not regulation, it would simply be a means of enabling creative producers to get down to work in Europe, and a way of avoiding seeing all the talent, intelligence and capital – for this is the new trend – disappearing over to Hollywood. I would therefore like to ask the Commissioner whether she does not think that the time has come to work on a new directive for the cinema. Is it not time – since this is one of the distinguishing features of the Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sport, which I belong to, – for us all to sit down together one day and consider how we are going to rescue the European film industry? And I repeat, this is not a petition for rules and regulations, this is taking a long, hard look at how films are made, for there is no mystery about it. Films cannot be made without a major injection of capital, and that is where we fall down in Europe. I believe this presents a unique opportunity for the European Investment Bank."@en1
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