Final resolution addressed to the Euro-Mediterranean Heads of State and Government Cairo (Egypt) - 19 April 2009
We, members of the Permanent Conference of the Mediterranean Audiovisual Operators (COPEAM), which includes the great majority of the Mediterranean audiovisual professionals as well as experts and eminent personalities from the cultural and media world, share the ambition to consolidate and deepen the exchanges between the States and the peoples of the Mediterranean basin.
We support the determination of the Heads of State and Government to convey the aspirations of the peoples who share the Mediterranean, cradle of our History and our millenary civilizations.
Since its inception, COPEAM has contributed to make the Mediterranean audiovisual sector a powerful vehicle of knowledge promotion, of ideas’ debates encouragement, of creations’ sharing, of works’ circulation, as well as an instrument in the fight against ostracism, self-withdrawal, xenophobia and all forms of fundamentalism.
In this perspective, the members of COPEAM, gathered in Cairo from 16 to 19 April 2009, on the occasion of our annual Conference, have adopted 10 major guidelines – corresponding to as many projects - that will contribute to the construction of the Union for the Mediterranean and that are included in the conclusions of the Mediterranean Cultural Forum of Marseille on the 4 and 5 November 2008.
We hope that our resolution will allow to initiate or implement innovative and emblematic forms of cooperation in the domains of Television, Radio and Internet, and to benefit from ad-hoc financial contributions promoting technological exchanges and professional know-how.
Such a political support would provide the Mediterranean audiovisual industry with more legitimacy, dynamism and influence so to bring the values and humanist beliefs that unite us among the largest audiences.
Structuring the Mediterranean Audiovisual Landscape
At the time of the digital revolution, new communication and media consumption prospects are emerging, leading to a deep transformation of the Mediterranean audiovisual landscape. COPEAM intends to accompany these changes by:
1. The creation of a Mediterranean Audiovisual University
The construction of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) represents a unique opportunity to place COPEAM as a major player in the training field and inscribe its action in the "Education" priority of the UfM, so consolidating the existing training devices and forging targeted partnerships with educational audiovisual-oriented structures in the region. The objective here is to identify the teams and the areas of research, professional and academic training working in the audiovisual field, to encourage meetings and exchanges of experiences, to disseminate the subjects of research in order to constitute a real “Mediterranean Audiovisual University”. This university would be a label of excellence for multilateral-oriented training and research.
2. Supporting know-how transfer and reinforcing training and dialogue policy among the region’s professionals.
Know-how transfer between the audiovisual professionals from the North and the South of the Mediterranean as well as their training, constitute one of the successful basis of the construction of an inter-cultural and inter-professional dialogue space. Strengthened by its experience in this field (University of COPEAM, Women blog), COPEAM will reinforce the development of such projects, and will accompany the new initiatives, among which the ones using new media representing a major tool of modernization of the television and radio organizations as well as a space encouraging the construction of the dialogue and exchanges.
3. Encouraging the setting up of a shared juridical frame
Many obstacles, in particular of juridical nature, still hinder the production and the dissemination of works. COPEAM wishes to favour the establishment of copyright protection rules, as well as the development of a harmonized regulatory frame through the implementation of the resolutions adopted by the MNRA (Mediterranean Network of Regulatory Authorities) in November 2008.
4. The creation of a Mediterranean Media Observatory
There is an important statistics deficit in the Mediterranean space. No common policy can be built if that deficit is not fulfilled. This is the objective that the Mediterranean Media Observatory should have: better know the reality of the Mediterranean audiovisual landscape in order to reinforce the coherence, the dynamism and the prosperity. Especially in connection with existing structures in charge of statistics’ collection, the Observatory will gather and widely disseminate databases useful and necessary to the understanding of the regional audiovisual systems. Meanwhile, it will be endowed with a permanent device aimed at monitoring the market and the players.
Developing and promoting the Euro-Mediterranean production
The challenge is to encourage partnerships in the field of production that are still too infrequent or non-existent. In the wake of cinema, which has the same ambition, broadcasters, authors, directors and producers must be committed and work in favour of the realization of co-production projects for radio and television. In this perspective, COPEAM proposes:
5. Development of a frame-agreement aimed at multiplying multilateral co-production projects
Many legal obstacles, especially in the domain of the intellectual property, get in the way of the production and broadcasting of the works. The members of COPEAM wish to develop a common legal tool that will allow them to overcome those obstacles. Some frame-agreements will have to be developed, offering models, legal and economic reference-frames allowing establishing the basis of the audiovisual production in the Mediterranean basin. Those frame-agreements will promote all genres: documentaries, fictions, magazines and reportages and new writing formats. All those rules in the field of intellectual property have to offer the Mediterranean audiovisual a stability that is one of the necessary conditions for its development.
6. Supporting production by developing multilateral co-productions.
The creation of a professional tool supporting the Mediterranean production
COPEAM supports the audiovisual production by coordinating the implementation of multilateral co-productions. It seeks to identify projects of common interest: from documentary to fiction, from magazine to reportage, to the creation of a study group for new formats. To support the production and develop the bilateral or multilateral co-productions, it is necessary to create a supporting fund to the Mediterranean production. Conceived and initiated by COPEAM, this fund would be supplied by private and public contributions – both national and European - and supported by the major Mediterranean broadcasters in the form of pre-purchases, acquisitions, co-productions...
7. Adopting a tariff policy favouring the access to the Mediterranean archives
In the continuation of Med-Mem, COPEAM, starting from an exhaustive and sophisticated analysis on the existing tariff practices, will propose a uniform and enforceable model guaranteeing to all its members, to the audiovisual players and to its partners easy access to archives and fair remuneration of archives’ holders and their copyrighters.
Facilitating the flow of contents
Attentive to the broadcasters’ editing and programming needs, COPEAM will identify and support the projects of common interest revealing all of the richness and the potentialities of the Mediterranean region.
8. The creation of a Mediterranean television channel : TERRAMED
Today, TERRAMED represents the initiation of a real multicultural and multilingual television channel broadcast by satellite. This television channel that COPEAM truthfully supports will have to produce, exploit and valorise the Mediterranean-oriented programmes and reportages in a Public service spirit. Real channel of the Mediterranean, it should eventually become a global media bear and completed by the Internet. A similar ambition has to be developed in the field of radio.
9. The enhancing of information exchanges through the development of EuroMed News project and ERN-Med programme
EUROMED NEWS aims at producing, exchanging and broadcasting, in a progressive and systematic way, news’, magazines’ and documentaries’ flows with a regional character. As for ERN-MED, it aims at promoting exchanges of Mediterranean news subjects. This unprecedented device is implemented with the concourse of COPEAM privileged partners: EBU and ASBU.
The emergence of a real Mediterranean audiovisual passes through the reinforcement of the devices of exchange and news of all nature sharing, especially in the field of image and sound.
10. Implementation of a portal devoted to the "Mediterranean audiovisual memories": Mem-Med
Tomorrow, Med-Mem will be an Internet portal, unique in the world, offering all the Internet audience the audiovisual memories of the Euro-Mediterranean region. In three languages and free, it already gathers 18 active and associated partners including 10 broadcasters. This project should eventually open to all the Mediterranean players. It aims, in the field of images and sounds, to build a history and a common and shared memory and to offer, in particular young generations, the tools of historic understanding of our contemporary Mediterranean World.