WIREDGOV

Artists and cultural professionals facing financial difficulties in today's harsh economic climate will be able to get funding more easily thanks to a new loan-guarantee facility set up as part of the Creative Europe programme agreed by Parliament and Council and endorsed on Tuesday by the culture committee.

With a budget of over €1.4 billion, the programme will promote the mobility of artists and the distribution of European audiovisual works. It will bring together and reorganise the existing Culture, MEDIA and MEDIA Mundus programmes and will run from 2014 to 2020.

Loan-guarantee facility to help generate funding for micro enterprises

SMEs and other micro organisations in the cultural and creative sectors – potential developers of cultural and creative projects such as video games, theatre or street performances – will have easier access to funding through loans from European banks partly guaranteed by the new facility.

Supporting audiovisual works in the digital age

The Creative Europe programme will support producers and distributors of audiovisual work faced with digitization and linguistic fragmentation on the European market. Priority will go to films, video games and multimedia, documentaries and short films.

In their negotiations with national governments, MEPs secured specific provisions for the funding of subtitling, dubbing and audio description of European films. This will help improve the distribution and increase the accessibility of European works from different countries.

Membership of the European Audiovisual Observatory

Thanks to Parliament's efforts, the EU will continue to be a member of the European Audiovisual Observatory, so that it can collect data and statistics on the audiovisual sector in the 28 member states of the EU.

If the agreement endorsed on Tuesday is adopted by the full Parliament at its Novermber session and then by the Council the new regulation can enter into force in January 2014.