"Tempest in a teacup. Towards a European Union’s cultural industries policy."

The cultural industries are nowadays achieving a prominent and strategic position on the European policy agenda. Their cultural and economic ambivalence and their twofold value (economic and cultural), result in conflicting viewpoints opposing the different EU institutions and their cultural and economical oriented departments. Next to this opposition, the lack of a coherent EU policy towards the cultural industries is also the result of the absence of an accepted common EU-description on the cultural industries as a whole, and to the existence of a lot of general and sectoral EU-rules, agreements and policies in force which could be applied to the cultural industries as a whole or to one of its sectors. Moreover, the sector of the cultural industries (which is highly but not fully digitalised), is increasingly crossing periodical and territorial limits through fast changes and is therefore surpassing local and national legislation. Within this context, the need to constitute a European regulatory framework and a made-to-measure policy for the cultural industries is thus becoming inevitable.

By in depth policy analysis this paper wants to provide an adequate conceptual framework from where to initiate the debate on the establishment of a European Union cultural industries policy. This paper attempts to reveal several tensions between the EU-institutions on the cultural and economic objectives of the cultural industries and its policy towards them. Firstly, the paper sets out the nature and the characteristics of the debate on the cultural industries by the different EU institutions and their Directorate Generals. Secondly, from a historically viewpoint (from 1945 until now) the paper examines legislation in force and other texts of the EU institutions that could be applied to the cultural industries (in particular the European cultural and competition policy, principles as subsidiarity, proportionality and other relevant Treaty articles). Thirdly the paper discusses the scope of and the tensions between the relevant EU rules and agreements in force for the cultural industries and considers the opposing viewpoints in those descriptions, objectives and policies. This analysis offers finally a starting point for a large debate on the cultural industries as a whole on European level, that accepts the cultural and economic ambivalence as a basic feature of the cultural industries.