This content was published on May 20, 2022 – 18:24
(updated with statements by Thierry Breton in Cannes)
Brussels/Cannes (France), May 20 (EFE).- The European Commission launched this Friday a new mechanism to stimulate private investment in the audiovisual sector, in areas such as cinema or the media, which Brussels hopes will serve to mobilize up to 400 million euros over the next seven years.
The Community Executive declared in a statement that the new financing tool, called “Media Invest”, was born with the aim of reversing the financial deficit that, in its opinion, this sector is going through in the European Union and making it competitive worldwide .
The European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Frenchman Thierry Breton, pointed out in that note that this mechanism “will strengthen” an audiovisual industry that, in his opinion, is often “underfinanced” and “in need of its own funds.”
As he said, “Media Invest” will serve to “promote European audiovisual production and distribution” and help companies to “better exploit their intellectual property assets.”
Breton made official this Friday the launch of the new financing mechanism during his stay as representative of the Commission in this year’s edition of the Cannes Film Festival, which takes place from May 17 to 28.
“‘Media Invest’ will be able to improve the bargaining power of independent production companies,” said the commissioner from that city on the French Côte d’Azur, according to whom private investment should also be increased and doing so “will help integrate new technologies and to promote innovation” in the sector.
In a panel on European film production, he advocated seeing it “as a great challenge but also a great opportunity” and stressed that although governments and the creative sector need each other, “there must be a distance between them” and he will ensure in his work that so be it.
“Pluralism is essential in democratic life. We must fight against all kinds of interference, private or public,” added Breton, for whom “there is no better place” than the Cannes festival to underline the importance of what the creative sector represents in the transmission of common European values.
His role, he said, is to help the members of that industry: “My main priority is to consolidate the strengths we have and increase our resilience. We need to use all the instruments at our disposal,” he concluded, referring to both national and international support plans. Europeans. EFE
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