23/06/2025 Culture, Science, Education and Media
Welcoming the finalisation of the draft Council of Europe Convention on the Co-production of Audiovisual Works in the form of Series, the PACE Committee on Culture said it “commends its ambition to promote cross-border collaboration and cultural diversity”.
However, adopting a preliminary draft opinion based on the report by Valentina Grippo (Italy, ALDE), the committee stressed the need to address concerns raised by member states, industry actors and the European Union. “Some issues require further consideration to enable the greatest number of member states to ratify the convention with confidence in its benefits,” the committee said. It warned that the current definition of “independent co-producers” could be considered as a “de facto supranational standard” and “generate normative interference with domestic legal frameworks and public support regimes”.
The draft opinion urges the Committee of Ministers to carry out a market analysis and an impact assessment with full stakeholder participation before adopting the convention. It also recommends removing or redrafting provisions on producer definitions, copyright, data sharing and licensing periods.
In particular, the committee recommends deleting Appendix III, which defines the independence criteria in the absence of national legislation and calls for each signatory to adopt its own definition of “independent producer” before the convention enters into force.