Thousands of cinema professionals, including prominent directors, screenwriters, actors and industry leaders from across Europe and beyond, have united around one message: Europe needs cinema. Cinema needs Europe.

We, representatives of the European film and audiovisual sector and the press sector, welcome the European Commission’s ambition to strengthen support for culture, audiovisual, media and democratic values under the future AgoraEU programme.

We, the European organisations representing the entire European film and audiovisual sector, would like to highlight the pivotal role played by the Creative Europe – MEDIA Programme, which is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. This milestone demonstrates the programme’s value and impact and makes it a true European success story.

The SAA is one of the more than 70 associations that have signed a joint letter from the cultural and creative sectors calling for an increased Creative Europe budget. This comes ahead of the EU Commission’s unveiling of its proposal for the next Multiannual Financial Framework (2028–2034) and amid rumours of a potential cut to the Creative Europe budget.

Organisations from across the Europe's film and audiovisual sector send a joint statement to EU Culture Ministers ahead of the Education, Youth, Culture and Sport Council on 12-13 May, calling for sector-specific effective EU funding programmes, to safeguard the long-term resilience, competitiveness and the vitality of Europe’s cultural and creative ecosystem.

Next MFF - EU funding for cross-border education, training and solidarity, youth, media, culture, and creative sectors, values, and civil society

We are approaching the end of the year, but the beginning of a new mandate for the European Commission. European audiovisual stakeholders therefore jointly call on European Ministers of Culture to reaffirm their commitment to policies that promote Europe’s unique cultural diversity while supporting local audiovisual ecosystems in a rapidly changing world.

The SAA welcomes the Commission’s proposal for a European Media Freedom Act and its objective to protect media freedom, independence and pluralism, as well as journalists. Indeed, it is crucial to make sure that the public and private media are able to freely express opinions without interference from governments. However, it is important to make sure that the EMFA regulation doesn’t create any legal uncertainties, especially those that may have adverse effects on European cultural diversity.

We, European authors, producers and distributors, welcome the adoption of the legal basis of the Europe Creative programme by the European Parliament, and the support provided to European creation. We are looking forward to the start of the calls for the Media Programme as soon as possible. However, the Work Programme for 2021 prepared by the European Commission includes concerns for the documentary sector which must be changed urgently.

In recent years, there has been an important increase on the use of AI in the audiovisual and media sectors. This raises key questions on authorship and creativity.

At this week’s Lumière Film Festival in Lyon, Commissioner Gabriel will present the prototype of the Directory of European Films developed by the European Audiovisual Observatory to increase the visibility of European films on the video-on-demand (VOD) market.

As organisations working across the European audiovisual sector, and in the context of the discussions surrounding the next Multi-annual Financial Framework, we would like to reiterate our support for the Creative Europe MEDIA Programme,