News

 Awards Ceremony of the 2010 European Union Prize for Literature: 18 November 2010, Brussels

The 11 winning authors from the participating countries in 2010 will be presented an award for their work by Mrs Androulla Vassiliou, the Commissioner in charge of Culture, Education, Multilingualism and Youth in the presence of public figures from the fields of culture, literature and politics.

The aim of the European Union Prize for Literature is to put the spotlight on the creativity and diverse wealth of contemporary European fiction, to promote the circulation of literature in Europe and encourage greater interest in literary works generally.

The European Union Prize for Literature is co-funded by the EU Culture Programme and by a consortium composed of the European Booksellers Federation (EBF), the European Writers' Council (EWC) and the Federation of European Publishers (FEP).
The ceremony will take place at the KVS (Royal Flemish Theatre) - 1000 Brussels on 18^th November at 18h00 and will be followed by a cocktail party. (Please note that the starting time given is provisional – participants will be notified of any change in this regard).
More information:  www.euprizeliterature.eu




 Stay ready to contribute to the public consultation on: "Which Culture Programme after 2013?"

 

The European Commission will launch an online public consultation towards mid-September to gather the opinions of cultural stakeholders on the next generation of the Culture programme.

The consultation will stay open until mid-December 2010. In January 2011 the European Commission will hold a public hearing and consult Member States representatives.

All these opinions will feed into the Commission proposal on the continuation of the programme after 2014, which will be presented to the other European institutions by autumn 2011.
http://ec.europa.eu/culture/news/news2624_en.htm

 GREEN PAPER - Unlocking the potential of cultural and creative industries

 

The European Commission has launched an online public consultation aimed at unlocking the full potential of Europe's cultural and creative industries. The consultation is based on a new Green Paper which addresses some key areas where making full use of policies and instruments at all levels of governance and achieving a greater coherence and coordination among them can effectively reinforce cultural and creative industries as important factors for sustainable and inclusive growth in Europe.  

Get the Green paper and participate:   

http://ec.europa.eu/culture/our-policy-development/doc2577_en.htm

 

The objective of this consultation is to gather views on various issues impacting the cultural and creative industries in Europe, from business environment to the need to open up a common European space for culture, from capacity building to skills development and promotion of European creators on the world stage. The responses to the consultation will inform the Commission and help it ensure that EU programmes and policies involving cultural and creative industries are "fit for purpose".

http://ec.europa.eu/culture/our-policy-development/doc2577_en.htm

 

 


 JOINT STATEMENT of the European Writers’ Council, European Visual Artists, European Federation of Journalists, Society of Audiovisual Authors, Federation of European Film Directors, and European Council of Artists

 

On the REPORT on enforcement of intellectual property rights in the Internal Market (2009/2178(INI))  3 June 2010, Committee on Legal Affairs, Rapporteur: Marielle Gallo and the Alternative Resolution. Motion for a European Parliament Resolution on enforcement of intellectual property rights in the internal market (2009/2178(INI)).

 

The EWC, EVA, EFJ, SAA, FERA, and ECA, together represent the professional interests and authors’ rights of more than 680.000 authors and creators in over thirty two countries of Europe and abroad, including writers, journalists, playwrights, screenwriters, literary  translators, visual artists, film and TV directors, illustrators, photographers, artists,

performers, composers, stage directors, and designers.

In this joint statement the six authors’ and creators’ federations address the Members of the European Parliament in order to express their support of the report of the Legal Affairs Committee on “Enforcement of intellectual property rights in the internal market” prepared by MEP Marielle Gallo and adopted by the Legal Affairs Committee in its meeting on 1 June 2010 due for vote in the plenary session in September 2010. They also found it necessary to refer to the “Alternative Resolution. Motion for a European Parliament Resolution on enforcement of intellectual property rights in the internal market (2009/2178(INI))”.

 

The full statement is available in PDF in the Joint Statements section under Authors’ Rights in our website.

 

 EWC and EVA Joint Statement on the Gallo Report

 

In May 2010, the European Writers’ Council and the European Visual Artists released a joint statement on the amendments tabled to M. Gallo’s “Draft report on 'Enhancing the enforcement of intellectual property rights in the internal market'.” (2009/2178(INI)), Committee on Legal Affairs, European Parliament.

 

EWC and EVA together represent the professional interests of over 180.000 authors and visual artists in 32 countries of Europe, including writers, playwrights, screenwriters, literary translators, visual artists, illustrators and photographers.

The Draft report was prepared by MEP Marielle Gallo (France), for which over one hundred amendments had been tabled, which were voted in the session of the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) of the European Parliament on June 1^st 2010.

The full statement is available in PDF in the Joint Statements section under Authors’ Rights in our website.

 

 EWC Open Letter on Freedom of Expression and Freedom of the Press in Italy, 9/07/2010

 

The Board of the European Writers’ Council, meeting in Helsinki on 3 July 2010, wish to express their profound concern about the alarming situation in Italy in the sector of Media, newspapers, publishing and culture, due to a proposed law that is already under discussion in the Italian Parliament.  This law would allow for severe financial and penal punishments for journalists and authors who choose freely to publish news stories in newspapers, books, TV formats or Internet Media, without submitting their copy to the proposed restrictions.  If this new law is approved, as seems to be the intention of the Government, without an appropriate and pluralistic debate on the matter, this will seriously affect Freedom of Information and Freedom of Expression in Italy.

 

Already the Vice-President of the European Commission, Mrs. Viviane Reding, has reminded the Italian government of “the high symbolic value of the European Charter on Freedom of the Press”.

The European Writers’ Council wishes to emphasize again the fundamental value of Freedom of Expression and Freedom of the Press for all authors, writers, journalists, and for all the citizens of Europe.

 

The PDF is available under Authors’ Rights > EWC Statements, in this website

 

 

 RECOMMENDATIONS TO EU Institutions, issued at the conference “Authors’ Rights in the Digital Worlds”, held at the European Parliament on 15 April 2010, and approved by the EWC 2010 Annual General Assembly, in Brussels.

The conference, organised by EWC, concluded successfully with the closing remarks by Helga Trüpel, MEP, Vice-Chairwoman, Committee on Culture and Education. Moreover, a set of key recommendations to EU institutions were proposed by authors in Europe.

For the full text of the recommendations, please visit our web section on the RECOMMENDATIONS, 15/04/2010 Conference page

 The European Commission Sets up a Reflection Group on Digitisation

 

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso has announced that the European Commission will entrust three personalities - Maurice Lévy (CEO of Publicis), Elisabeth Niggemann (Head of the German National Library) and Jacques De Decker (writer) - to come up with recommendations on how best to speed up the digitisation, online accessibility and preservation of cultural works across Europe. This Reflection Group will examine the various ongoing initiatives involving both public and private partners (notably the Google Books project) and copyright issues to find ways to boost the digitisation efforts of the complete collections held by libraries, museums and archives in Europe. These recommendations will ultimately help Europeana, Europe's digital library, reach a new dimension: today the Europeana portal (www.europeana.eu) already offers access to over 7 million digitised books, maps, photographs, film clips, paintings and musical extracts, but this is only a small part of all the works held by Europe's cultural institutions. The establishment of the Reflection Group is part of the Commission's broader strategy to help the cultural sector make the transition towards the digital age. The Group, who will report to Commission Vice President for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes and Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth Androulla Vassiliou, has been requested to submit its conclusions before the end of the year.

The Group has been invited to provide a set of recommendations for the digitisation, online accessibility and preservation of Europe's cultural heritage. It will look at how to fund digitisation, including the possibilities and conditions for public-private partnerships. It will also address copyright issues and licensing practices to facilitate the digitisation of copyrighted material – in particular out-of-print works and the so-called orphan works, which represent a large part of Europe's collections.

 

Of course, the current digitisation challenges go beyond the need to put online our cultural heritage. We thus need to address subsequently in a second phase the broader question of digital (i.e. online) distribution and accessibility of all cultural content in Europe. Setting up the Reflection Group is part of a broader strategy that will also include the search for new and effective business models as well as a favourable environment for creative industries and a fair remuneration for creators.

More information at: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/10/456

 WIPO Member States Discuss Key Copyright Issues

 Geneva, June 25, 2010, PR/2010/648

WIPO’s top copyright negotiating body this week discussed better access to copyright-protected works for the blind, visually impaired (VIP) and other reading-disabled persons, as well as updating the rights of broadcasting organizations.  The Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), meeting from June 21-24, 2010 also reviewed the status of discussions on updating the rights of performers in their audiovisual performances, calling for concrete proposals to advance negotiations.

Full press release at: http://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2010/article_0021.html

  

 New WIPO website on access to works for Visually Impaired Persons