On May 16th, AZAS was invited to Brussels by AEPO-ARTIS who organised a seminar on the EU enlargement and the impact hereof on performer rights. With representatives from three different EC Departments, performer organisations from a.o. Türkiye, Serbia, North Macedonia and Georgia and over 65 participants, the seminar was a succesfull first step towards a strong future collaboration with performers and their organisations in the EU Candidate Member States.
The seminar’s morning session was kicked off by Marie-Sophie Peyre from DG Near who succinctly explained the political objective behind the enlargement and carefully explained the entire accession procedure and the general status of each individual candidate.
Willy Kokolo from DG EAC took a closer look at the role culture plays in the enlargement. While pointing out that the EU still does not have an full competence on Culture, he explained that there is however a thing called the “EU cultural acquis” that candidate member states need to embrace. In addition he explained to what extent the programmes connected to the current EU Workplan for Culture are already used to strengthen the cooperation with candidates.
It became clear from the discussion that the path to EU membership and implementation of the copyright acquis was necessary to start up collective management for actors in several countries. However, it also became clear that several countries have seized the opportunity to give their actors a lavel of protection that exceeds the European minimum and for which their collective management orgisations received full competence.
AZAS will keep the positive energy and will push hard for finalizing the process of approval of the Tarriff and to move forward with its proper and active work for the benefit of all members.