With start of Poland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union, AEPO-ARTIS sent an open letter to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, highlighting the importance of culture and calling for the strengthening of performers’ rights.
Read the full letter below.
Dear Mister Tusk,
Dear Prime Minister of Poland,
Congratulations on a wonderful start to the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union. For the next six months Poland will be responsible for the successful start of an ambitious trio program with Denmark and Cyprus.
We understand that our society is in a period where emphasis needs to be put on security and borders. But allow us to respectfully scroll down immediately to the topic that is always to be found on the last pages of any Presidency programme: culture.
AEPO-ARTIS is a non-profit making organisation that represents 40 European performers’ collective management organisations from 30 different countries. The number of performers, from the audio and audiovisual sector, represented by our members is estimated at more than 650.000.
As actor, singer, dancer or musician, they are the face of our culture, they are the bridge between creation and experience, they represent the diversity of our culture in all its meanings and provide it with its connecting potential. Most importantly, at a time of great societal tension, they can be a way of uniting all Europeans, regardless of their political ideology.
But performers are also economic players. They are solo-workers, startups and can sometimes become as big as an SME. When performers read the Polish objective of reducing economic dependencies and providing a level playing field, they want you to know that they need one thing: fair remuneration.
They are therefore grateful to read that this Presidency, like many before it, will be focusing on the status of artists and creators in the creative sectors. But may we please ask you for a slightly more ambitious goal than facilitating the approval of already existing conclusions? One of the most important areas where the European Union can make real progress, because it already falls under its competences, is that of copyright and related rights.
Although Poland was the last country to implement the 2019/790 Copyright in the Digital Single Market directive, it did so in an almost exemplary way.
For performers in the audiovisual sector, the transposition provides a model of technology-neutral legislation that strikes a good balance between promoting new consumer possibilities and ensuring fair remuneration for actors and other performers active in the audiovisual sector. By opting for collective management as a driving force, Poland also choses a European approach. Collective management is largely harmonised by the EU acquit and offers a guarantee of non-discriminatory treatment throughout the Union.
We are therefore hopeful that it will be under the Polish Presidency that the EU will take the first steps in ratifying the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances. This WIPO treaty, which the European Union signed in 2013, aims at improving the worldwide protection of performers in the audiovisual sector. A unique momentum for the EU to show that it puts the position of its artists first. Despite 12 years having passed by and despite claiming full competence on this Treaty, the Commission has not done anything to prepare the ratification. We expect the Polish Presidency to push the Commission to take up its responsibility and provide a first draft before the end of June.
While we are full of praise for Poland for the recent choices made in the audiovisual sector, we should note that there is still a lot of work to be done for our musicians. Collective management can only be – a guarantee for non-discriminatory treatment of artists throughout the EU if it is provided with non-discriminatory legislation.
Numerous studies as well as reports from the European Parliament show irrefutably that the current huge profits being made by streaming and social media platforms are not shared fairly with the performers that lie at the source of every recording. The blind reliance on the industry to achieve the objective of fair remuneration, as set out in article 18 of the CDSM directive, is widening the gap between global market players and the individual European artists. A recent report entitled Streams and Dreams part 2, concludes that action is urgently needed since the contractual improvements that the directive offers, have proven to be completely non-functioning and without effect.
The position of many member states – that the record and film industries will voluntarily share their profits to achieve the objective of fair remuneration – is naïve in the extreme.
With the assessment of the directive due for 2026, we expect the Polish Presidency to put a thorough analysis of the effective impact of its Chapter 3 high on the agenda and insist that this is done rigorously and that its results will be published with absolute transparency.
The debate about technology-neutral copyright legislation that prioritises fair remuneration of artists is also important for that other topic that everyone is talking about. Yes, we are taking about how the AI Act has provided AI developers a free pass to scrape the entire European cultural field for their own profit. We understand that Europe is falling for the story that AI will provide the solution to everything. But should this be at the expense of our cultural sector? As it looks today, AI will offer our performers more problems than solutions. And so, again, the key point is fair remuneration. Performers must at all times have the right to be compensated for their contribution to the huge profits that AI companies will make with their innovative role in the cultural and creative sectors.
As primary provider of training content, artists and other rightholders should be entitled to a guaranteed remuneration when their works are being used. The current framework fails to strike a balance. The Hungarian Presidency has put the topic on the agenda. We expect the Polish Presidency to keep it there. It is the most important topic to discuss in the field of generative AI.
We are thankful for the fact that the Presidency has already put collective management on the agenda of the Council’s WP on Intellectual Property, emphasising its important role in providing remuneration for performers and acknowledging the challenges rapid technological growth brings about. AEPO-ARTIS and its members will actively collaborate on this and provide the Polish Presidency and the Commission with all the information needed to arrive at concrete policy choices.
We hope that the Polish Presidency will be decisive and push the European Union to make significant progress in the coming 6 months. You have the unique opportunity to set the tone for the next four years of this new legislature. Make it a fair, just and inclusive one.
We remain at your disposal should you have any questions, let us know what your next concert or movie will be, and we will meet you there.
On behalf of every performer whose work you have ever appreciated.
Most respectfully,
Ioan KAES
General Secretary, AEPO-ARTIS
