Last week Members of the European Parliament around Niklas Nienass and Salima Yenbou has started an important campaign to call on the European Commission and the Member States to take immediate action in a coordinated manner and do whatever it takes to mitigate the negative consequences of the COVID-19 crisis on the Cultural and Creative Sectors, especially independent creators as well as small and medium-sized enterprises and associations. A central action is an open letter, which meanwhile was signed by total number of 105 MPs and 312 cultural associations and which was sent today to the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, Commissioner Thierry Breton and Commissioner Mariya Gabriel.
EFGAMP has signed the letter already and is supporting the long term claim of proactive, large-scale and integrated measures across all policy areas are necessary to make a strong and sustained impact as well as the following immediate and unbureaucratic initiatives in the short term:
- Offer financial aid to the Cultural and Creative Sectors and the whole cultural ecosystem, including through the Corona Response Investment Initiative, proportionally to the size of the CCS in our economy.
- Ensure access to unemployment and other social benefits for all cultural professionals, with particular attention to freelancers, self-employed and others in atypical forms of work, including creators coming from cultural minorities, and grant them compensation for the discontinuation of income.
- Provide emergency aid to cultural professionals, especially the independent ones, as well as to small and medium-sized cultural companies, for example in the form of tax relief, loans, (micro-)credits, compensation for losses and non-recoverable costs.
- Implement fiscal measures to relieve the pressure on the CCS and stimulate a recovery in the consumption of cultural services.
- Once the COVID-19 crisis is over, the EU must:
- Set up an adequately funded stimulus package for cultural creators all over Europe in order to tackle the long-term effects on the CCS. This package should also include legal facilitation for the mobility of artists and their works, e.g. regarding taxation and visa regulations.
- Protect the CCS from future shocks, in particular by reinforcing its social dimension and adapting rules on social security and labour rights, taking into account the diversity of the CCS workforce.
- Increase public funding to arts and culture while also ensuring their access to other sources of finance, for example by reinforcing the availability of the CCS Guarantee Facility.
The initiative can be shared and joined here:
