Spanish Ministry of Culture coordinates position with culture associations and management entities ahead of upcoming negotiations on proposed Digital Single Market Directives

On Thursday morning, the State Secretariat of Culture hosted a meeting between representatives from culture associations and intellectual property right management bodies with Central Government agencies with powers over and interests in the issue of intellectual property in order to coordinate a common position ahead of the upcoming negotiations in Brussels on the package of reforms on copyright issues and the legal telecommunications regime, which encompasses the Digital Single Market Strategy that was recently presented by the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker.

On behalf of Central Government, the meeting was attended by the Director-General for Cultural Policy and Industries and Books, José Pascual Marco, Guadalupe Melgosa and Araceli Gozalo from the ICAA (Spanish Institute for Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts) and Inés Crespo from the State Secretariat of Telecommunications and the Information Society. On behalf of the culture industries and management entities, the meeting was attended by representatives from CEDRO (Magdalena Vinent), Visual Entidad de Gestión de Artistas Plásticos-VEGAP (Belén Alvarez), Sociedad General de Autores y Editores-SGAE (Cristina Perpiña), Entidad de Gestión de Derechos de los Productores Audiovisuales-EGEDA (Rafael Sánchez), La Liga (Ignacio Gurpegui), Asociación de Editores de Diarios Españoles-AEDE (Miguel Ortego and José Gabriel González), Federación del Gremio de Editores de España (Antonio María Ávila), Unidad de Televisiones Comerciales en Abierto-UTECA (Andrés Armas and Miguel Langle), Asociación de Productores Audiovisuales-FAPAE (Mabel Kimt), Asociación Española de Videojuegos-AEVI (Cristóbal Herrera), Mediapro (José Valls), Asociación de Gestión de Derechos Intelectuales-AGEDI (Beatriz Sánchez), Telefónica (Lidont Safont), Asociación de Editores de Revistas-ARI (Yolanda Ausín), Desarrollo Español de Videojuegos-DEV (Antonio Fernández) and Federación de Distribuidoras Cinematográficas-FEDICINE (Estela Artacho).

Significant change to the copyright regime

The package of measures proposed by the European Commission implies a far-reaching reform of the copyright regime that, in the words of President Juncker himself, seeks to strengthen the position of artists and creators while protecting their work and ensuring appropriate remuneration regardless of whether their creations are published in the analogue or digital world.

The initiatives encompass a wide range of measures aimed at hitting the targets of: ensuring broader access to content; adapting exceptions to the cross-border and digital realm; and building a balanced copyright market that functions correctly.

The initial assessment of the challenge presented by adapting regulations to the Digital Single Market provided by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport to those attending the meeting was that this is a highly important initiative that could strengthen the position of rights holders and standardise publisher rights over the digital use of their publications across Europe. Major efforts will be necessary during the negotiations for these targets to be achieved and the interests of Spanish culture industries to be included.

José Pascual Marco, the Director for Culture Policy and Industries and Books, said that "we must absolutely ensure that this opportunity is not wasted and adopt a highly active position at the negotiations so that the final legislation is as complete and effective as possible in defending the rights of creators".

Thursday's meeting with culture representatives and management bodies continues the efforts aimed at maintaining open dialogue between all of them and the ministerial department so that a common position can be found among all the various positions adopted by the numerous sectors affected with a view to defending their rights in Brussels.

The ministerial department reminded them that the presentation of directive proposals is the beginning of a negotiation process that could take several years within the framework of the EU for standardising the copyright regime in the Digital Single Market. Spain will work hard and proactively to ensure that the final result satisfies the concerns of its industries and meets the common objectives presented by Jean-Claude Juncker.