Committee on Culture and Education Ordinary meeting
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Seguir as suas sessõesOrador 5
And it has become clear that maybe in the past media was quite regionally, even locally, but certainly not beyond nationally defined. But in today's world, this is no more true because the media take place in the online environment. And that means at least when it comes to the dissemination of media, we have to consider the online platform environment in order to make sure that this reliable source of information actually reaches the people that are supposed to be informed. And that's why this online cross border normality, as I want to call it, makes it indispensable that there are cross border institutional and corporation structures in place, which indeed the European Media Freedom Act has done up to a certain extent and is being realized in practice now. And then, obviously, and most importantly, maybe, the digital services act of 2022 is now in the midst of enforcement, both on the level of the member states vis-à-vis smaller platforms, but also by the European Commission when it comes to the very large online platforms and the very large online search engines.
Orador 4
And why is that again important? Because the Digital Services Act maybe is regarded as being what the European Union expects from the actors in the field to do to protect minors. For example, audiovisual media service providers very clearly know what type of content, which is under their editorial responsibility, they can disseminate and what they should not disseminate if they don't want to be in trouble. When it comes to video sharing platforms, these rules in article 28b of the AVMSD are also quite clear. When it comes to the DSA, these rules are quite general, that online platforms which fall under this obligation have to reach a very high level of security protection for minors.
Orador 5
But what exactly that means is only partly laid down in law, and more detailed in the so-called guidelines on article 28 by the European Commission. So that's why it's very important. A third element of the DSA that I would like to mention is think of the role that online platforms can play or do play in the dissemination of content, also if it is harmful content, potentially harmful content, like, for example, a disinformation campaign. Right? And I know that disinformation is maybe not in everyday's focus in the discussion at the moment, but it is extremely important when we discuss potential systemic risks of platforms, and that's why I would opt to see the whole environment, the regulatory environment as one: AVMSD, MFAR, and DSA.
And it's not even complete because there are other content-related rules, like, for example, the transparency and targeting of political advertising that you also have to put into the picture if you look at it together. And now, what does this mean if we've got all of these elements? It's very important that you see that these rules stand next to each other, but they all also obviously have overlaps. And that's important that we understand how we can in the future maybe optimize the regulatory framework for the audiovisual sector to make sure that these different applicable rule sets altogether contribute to a coherent set of rules, which are very clear for the providers, but also for the people that are concerned, the users of these platforms. So what does that mean for the future?
My main recommendations, if I may say so, the main focus areas that I would put on is, number one, we have to still distinguish between any online platform and platforms which are media driven, which means have a content element and currently are mainly reached by the rules under AVMSD and MFAs. Video sharing platforms, but also online platforms, when it comes, for example, to the way they treat media content when they moderate. So that's one important element. There are very specific platforms and we should address very specific functions of platforms separately. Second recommendation is very simple, be there.
What do I mean? I think the role of the Cult Committee of the European Parliament in the upcoming discussions will be as important as it was in the past. Why? Number one, for the obvious reason, it reflects the cultural dimension of the media, of audiovisual media. Just mentioned as one core element, the European works provisions and the visibility of European works in the audiovisual sphere is very much regulated by the audiovisual media services directive, and the way it's transposed in the member states.
And here, I think the CALT Committee will play and should play a very important role. But it also goes one step beyond. The AVMST is a directive, which means it is a role model for the interplay between EU level regulation and national regulation. And the CALT Committee has in the past always also seen this need to align in a way the variations that you might have in the member states together with a very effective enforcement that takes place on the European level through the rules that are harmonized, such as the AVMSD. Third point, protection of minors in the online context.
I think it will be important that we align the expectations that are put toward what platforms should do, what platforms have to provide as measures when it comes to protecting minors. What do I mean? The rules, as I said, for audiovisual media service providers are very clear and also very strict, because they have editorial responsibility over their content. And we have to understand what can be expected in the online environment where a lot of content is not under the editorial responsibility of the ones that disseminate, but those that disseminate have an organizational responsibility on the way they do it. And, for example, might come into a position where they have to check what age our users have before we play out the content to them.
Fourth point, and this actually is very closely related to the protection of miners' issue, is enforcement. And here I see a core. Maybe the question at this point in time is less about adding more substantive elements. It is more about making sure that the elements that we have in the regulatory framework can be effectively enforced, the enforcement structures. Which authorities are in charge?
How can they interact with other authorities which may be in charge under the DSA, for example? So how does the interaction take place on a national level, but also how does the interaction take place with the European Commission, with all of the European boards, like the European board for media services or the European board for digital services. So that, for me, is very important. I give you one example. Ireland, that by definition is a very important member state when it comes to online platforms because of their place of establishment, has a very interesting piece of new legislation, the online safety code.
And therefore, other member states can maybe also learn from enforcement that takes place under the new authority that is finally in place in Ireland. Last point, but maybe also one of the most important points that ties back to what I said at the beginning: the role of the regulatory framework to ensure reliable media. The most obvious rule that we can connect this to is the prominence rule, the findability rule in the audiovisual media services directive, which for the moment is very general. Member States can foresee prominence measures that the providers under their jurisdiction have to respect. And that is, I think, a core element for the future.
How can we make sure that public value content, general interest content is findable in the online environment, not only European works, but also, for example, reliable news sources? And after all, article three of EMFA says we all have a right to these independent and reliable news and information sources. And there, I think the idea would be to try to help member states to find creative solutions in how they can contribute to sustainability, to future-proofness of media in this very competitive environment. I would even go as far as saying the changes that we are currently seeing compared to what happened when search engines appeared on the scene are really radical. Search engines were small, but AI summaries, to give you the task that I think is gonna be the most challenging one, AI summaries online have the potential to radically damage the media information sphere, not only in terms of competitive disadvantage, but also in the question of what will happen in medium term with the reliability of news information if it is always only put together by AI summaries and people are only informing themselves in that way.
So a lot to be done. I'm happy to discuss this further both today and in other opportunities, but I definitely think the CALD Committee has to raise its hand when it comes to making sure that the AVMST stays future-proof. Thank you very much.
Thank.
Adeline Hulen
Madam president.
Thank you very much, madam chair, members of the call committee, members. I'll be speaking today on the reform of the AVSM directive. I'm head of the media and information literacy and digital competencies unit at UNESCO. This year, I'm spending a lot of my time on the impact of new media actors who play a key role in access to information, particularly for younger people. And that's why I'm here today.
UNESCO is not a regulator nor is it a technical specialist in terms of the AFS AVSMD. But in terms of freedom of information and access to information, that's what we're interested in. And we've looked at different information systems and ecosystems, and the emergence of new actors such as content creators. And we are celebrating the freedom of Press Freedom Day, which calls for reliable free information, which is the basis of all democracies. That means it depends on journalists, but it also depends on solid governance, governance for all of those who are distributing and producing information.
Europe is a driving force here with the European Media Act and the AVMSD as well. The objective is still the same here. The dynamic in terms of information access has changed. The World Trends Report, which we publish every four years, which was published in 2025, cast a light on some of the key developments in recent years, which is the emergence of content creators. 78% of Europeans follow one or more content creators, and TikTok has become, for some, a major source of information.
And young people prefer to get information from a content creator than from a journalist. And this is often seen from a risk angle in terms of polarization, manipulation. But, of course, that is a risk. As a French influencer, said, called Gaspar G, who is a young French creator, who is followed by 1,700,000 young people, at a hearing at the French senate a few weeks ago, he said that he was sort of trying to show young people what reality is. Young people are not disinterested in information, but they're just moving away from the way traditional media has presented it.
Creators create a link and make information available. I'm using content creator as a term rather than influencer. Many don't see themselves as a content creator, rather than just trying to generate a profit. There are millions of creators in Europe, and the turnover could be over 25,000,000 soon. They have become a key part of delivering information.
Looking at the numbers, the directive is considering the inclusion of these people who can reach many people. There are differences, though. They are producing content in many different formats, not just audiovisual. Second reason is that the content is hybrid as well. They often mix personal content and content that has been edited.
Also, they depend on platforms virtually 100%. They don't control the algorithms or the rules, and they have quite precarious economic models like micro entrepreneurs, which makes regulation a totally different issue, and I'll come back to that in a moment. A global study carried out by UNESCO in 2024 of 45 countries, content creator called Behind the Scenes gives us a picture of these creators. They're nano or micro creators, less than 10,000 subscribers, and they can't live just off this content creation. They don't check the veracity of the information that they publish, and many of them are not familiar with the legal framework that applies to them, and most don't belong to a professional organization.
73% would like to be trained, though. This is a sector which is asking for monitoring. When we launched the first call for education for content creation in 2023 at UNESCO. More than 10,000 people signed up over the course of a few weeks. So there's massive demand out there and an urgent need.
I'd now like to look at four major tensions, which will feed into your work on the reform of the ABSMD. First of all, editorial responsibility. The directive is based on editorial responsibility for actors who select and program content, but content creators create from a personal angle and under the influence of platforms. So it would be perhaps more relevant to focus on certain categories of content, such as those who have a large audience or those that produce information, and do have editorial activity online. Then there are questions of ethics, professional standards, and self-regulation that come into play.
A European journalist federation study said that there's a lot of division in terms of their association, and the same can be said with different press bodies as well. Content creators don't necessarily want to be seen as journalists, but they want access to professional support which could encourage self regulation. The second tension is the country of origin principle under the AVSMD directive. France and Spain have a legal con, definition of content creator, but this is or elsewhere, it's just a soft law vague definition, which creates distortions of competition and allows each creator to choose the best framework that suits them while sticking to the country of origin principle. Other jurisdictions outside Europe are combining strategies with advantageous tax schemes, and more and more European content creators are setting up outside Europe but still produce for European audiences.
A European framework that ignores this could accentuate the phenomenon. The second, the third tension is that some of the ambitions of the directors are difficult to transpose, and creators have to find lots of creativity. For instance, cultural diversity, creators don't have programming ability, then the issue of the protection of minors. Age verification tools are limited to a greater extent. Most platforms don't allow creators to focus or target an audience.
Then there's the issue of pluralism. It's difficult to ask creators to make sure that there's the balance in terms of opinions, and we can't have someone posting on social networks on their own accounts due to issues of political bias. There are existing laws such as defamation, hate speech, and consumer protection. The problem is not just an absence of rules, but a lack of knowledge amongst content creators, as I mentioned before, on the legal framework that applies to them. Then we have the fight against disinformation, which depends on platform governance, the recommendation systems, and their moderation rules.
The DSA is a tool to deal with this and the systemic risk. We should not duplicate the DSA, but make sure that there's a link between obligations which need to be proportionate, and we should try and avoid strengthening the role of the more powerful players. To reform the directive, we have to firstly define in a harmonized way actors across Europe, then reform the directive and make sure that it's the right tool for each different issue or to see if other legislation could come into place such as DSA, and then calibrate obligations in a proportionate way. And above all, regulation is not enough. Let's recognize that.
We have to make sure that there is enough information and training for creators, for society. Freedom of speech is a two-way street. Regulating without training people, I think, is just making things more entrenched. Thank you very much.
Thank.
Nela Riehl
Thank you very much. I'll now give the floor to Madam Marta Kryptovska. You have 10 minutes as well.
Marta Chetopska
Dear members of the European Parliament, dear colleagues, thank you for inviting me here. I speak to you today not as a lawyer, academic, or regulator, but as a producer, someone who has spent years trying to make stories exist, to finance them, protect them, and bring them to audiences across borders. Today, when we speak about creative freedom, we often think in terms of censorship, whether someone is allowed to speak or not. But from my perspective, as a producer, creative freedom is not only about the absence of censorship. It's about the conditions that allow stories to exist.
And today, these conditions are increasingly shaped not by creators, but by systems, market pressures, global platforms, algorithms, and data-driven decision making. I spent over 10 years producing content for major broadcasters such as Discovery Channel Plus, BBC, Warner, and many more. I produced hundreds of hours of documentary series, including one of the most successful international formats for Discovery globally. And I'm proud of that work, but I also know how that system functions. It's a system where storytelling is often reduced to a mathematical structure, when every minute is designed to retain attention, where these decisions are driven by data, not by meaning.
This model is extremely efficient, but it does not create space for risk, for depth, for true cultural diversity. Today, we live in an age of abundance. Never before have citizens had access to so many works, so much content, so many platforms, so many choices. Yet many people feel stories are becoming more similar, more predictable, more designed for performance than for meaning. This is the paradox of our time.
More content, but often less connection. More rich, but sometimes less depth. More consumption, but not always more understanding. And when that happens, creative freedom becomes narrower than it appears. Because freedom is not only the right to speak, it's also the chance to be discovered, to be financed, to keep ownership of your own work, and to reach audiences without disappearing inside a system no one can see.
That is why out of visual media service directive matters. Creative Europe media matters. Earlier reforms were important. Requirements for platforms and broadcasters to include European films and programs, protection of minors, advertising rules, and obligation to give European works visibility. They recognize that the market alone does not guarantee diversity.
That remains true today, but the market has changed faster than our rules. Today, a platform may finance production, distribute it, recommend it, measure it, and decide whether it's visible. That is an enormous power. And when financing, distribution, data, and discoverability are concentrated in one place, the question is no longer only economic. It becomes democratic.
So allow me to offer five priorities for the future of audiovisual policy. First, European works must not only be present, they must be visible. A title hidden deep in a catalog is not genuine prominence. We need transparency about recommendation systems and discoverability, and the data about viewership for producers, for funders, for policymakers, especially for smaller countries and languages. For them, visibility is survival.
Second, Europe must support independent producers. They take risks, support first-time directors, tell local stories, and build bridges across borders. But too often, they are asked to surrender the rights entirely in exchange for financing. If this continues, Europe may keep talent but lose ownership. Third, we should clarify what we mean by European work.
Policy should reward real European creative contribution, real decision making, and real value creation, not only legal structures on paper. Fourth, those who benefit substantially from European audiences should contribute fairly to European creation. This is not protectionism. This is a balance. This is sustainability.
Fifth, we must invest seriously in media literacy and the protection of minors. Young people now grew up in environments where entertainment, advertising, influence, and identity are blended together. Europe should help them navigate that world with confidence and critical thinking. But let me go beyond pure policy for a moment. Europe rightly speaks today about security, defense, and resilience.
These are urgent matters, but there's another form of resilience we should not underestimate. It's cultural resilience. The resilience of citizens who feel they belong to a shared project, the resilience of societies that understand one another, the resilience of people who recognize themselves and their neighbors in the stories they watch. When a Polish audience watches a Danish drama, when a Spanish family watches an Estonian documentary, when a French teenager discovers Romanian cinema, when creators from five countries make one film together. Europe becomes real, not in treaties, not in slogans, but in emotion, curiosity, and recognition.
This is why programs like Creative Europe Media have been so important. They do not only fund films, they create relationships, trust, and professional networks. In today's Europe, cooperation itself is a strategic infrastructure. So the evaluation of AVMSD is not a narrow legal exercise. It's a choice about what kind of continent we want to become, a continent that rents its imagination from elsewhere or one that continues to create its own, a continent where diversity is decorative, or one where diversity is visible, financed, and strong. A continent where creators become service providers or one where creators remain authors.
If I may end personally, I grew up between different worlds. I know what distance feels like. I also know that distance can be reduced sometimes by politics, sometimes by courage, and sometimes by one powerful story. That is why this matters, because we are not only regulating markets. We are shaping memory.
We are shaping belonging. We are shaping whether Europeans will continue to understand one another. And in times like this, that may be one of the most important forms of strength we have. Thank you.
Nela Riehl
Thank you very much. And now I give the floor to Mister Sallie Deutsche. And,
Mister Sallie, for ten minutes as well.
Tarek Saleh
Ah. Oh, now you can hear me. Alright. What a great speech, Marta. I am a little bit nervous to speak to you here, dear members of the European Parliament, because I was advised before not to be emotional, because you don't respond well to that, I heard.
You don't like it. So, I'm gonna try to be very unemotional about this. You know, 1939, the Nazis were arresting Jews in Berlin. And, Michael was seven years old and his little brother Robert, who was four years old, were escaping through Europe alone. They were going through Italy, and they were traveling to America where freedom waited. And there, they found a new life.
And this little boy, seven year old boy, I have a seven year old daughter, so it's very hard to even imagine her traveling alone. But he became Mike Nichols, one of the greatest film directors in the world, who was one of the European directors who created Hollywood. He did films like The Graduate and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. But when the list was so long, it was Ilya Kassan, it was Milos Forman. It was Billy Wilder.
It was all these, you know, Fritz Lang, these amazing European directors that formed Hollywood. You know? And without them, there wouldn't be any Netflix. There wouldn't be any Paramount or Warner Bros. It was built by them.
Right? Well, now the tide has turned. You know, people are coming to Europe from all over the world because it's the place where freedom still exists. Freedom of speech, artistic freedom. We created something that was called the author in cinema. And I wanna be personal for a little while about talking about because I don't know the regulations so much.
I just benefit from them. So, I, you know, I don't see myself as a Swedish filmmaker, a Swedish director. I don't see myself as an Egyptian director. I see myself as a European director. And it's actually a little bit, how could I say it?
I say that with pride because it means quality in the world. That European cinema stands for quality because the currency we don't have, we don't have as much money as the big players, China, America, Saudi Arabia. But we do have this currency of freedom, and that is so important. So I wanna talk a little bit why I think cinema is so important. Cinema is, of course, you know, some pretentious person said that it's sculpturing in time.
But there is another thing you can say about cinema. It's the illiterate art form. Right? It's the art form for someone who can't read and write. So you will not only pay about €11, you will travel somewhere, you know, far away.
You will be someone else for two hours, which is amazing. You will take someone else's decision. I can be a 10-year-old girl in Zimbabwe or I can be a serial killer in Mashad, Iran, or I can be a stockbroker at Wall Street for two hours and take this person's decisions. And this is extremely powerful. This saved me as a kid to go to the cinema and to travel somewhere else.
And when I started to make films myself, I realized that cinema making film is not just, that's not only the important thing. It's actually to watch cinema in a cinema theater. When we watch a story together in a cinema, we're actually participating in an act of empathy because we are experiencing together someone else's experience. And this is actually quite big. So I'll tell you a little bit about my own weird journey, you know, because I did two films that were quite how could I say?
They were not successful. And normally, when you have done two feature films that are not successful, your career is over, basically. I mean, I sort of agree. I mean, it's not a human right to make big, expensive films. You know?
So if you fail enough times, you should be stopped. You know? But I had this last chance where I did a film about the corrupt policeman in Cairo. It's called the Nile Hilton incident. And it was financed by four European countries with this thing that Martha talked about, this intricate little network of producers that have gotten to know each other through AVE.
They had participated in workshops, you know, things that, because I'm a cool director, I was like, oh, that sounds boring, you know. But it was amazing because they got to know each other. They built these amazing networks. So just a week before I was gonna shoot this film in Cairo with European money, state security in Egypt threw me out. And they didn't just throw me and my film team out of the country.
They made it very clear, do not ever come back. So, I gathered this crew which consisted of European filmmakers and some Arab filmmakers. And I said, like, listen guys, we're not gonna shoot in a week. We're gonna move to Morocco and make this film instead. And so we made this film together.
And then I showed it in America at the Sundance Film Festival, and the premiere was on the first day, it was on the first inauguration of Donald Trump, his first term. And there was something special that happened in that room because my film was about, you know, a narcissistic Egyptian businessman who was building houses and who was a predator and who had political ambitions. And in that room in America, I realized that they don't look at this film as if it's about Egypt. They look at it as if it's about America. And what was fantastic was I won the Sundance Film Festival that year.
So all of a sudden, it was successful. And what happens when you're successful is that Hollywood calls you right away. I mean, we're talking I won on a Saturday. They called me on Monday and said, what do you want to do? And I started working in Hollywood.
And, what I found in Hollywood was that people were jealous of me as a European filmmaker. They said, you have freedom. You get to do your story. They don't tell you what to do. And I started to value that.
And then when I was gonna do the second film in this trilogy that I made, the Cairo trilogy, Boy From Heaven, that is about an Islamic institution called Al Assar, which is, by the way, inspired by an Italian author in the beginning, you know, in the name of the rose. So Netflix came to me and said, we offer you double the budget of this so-called EuroPudding financing that you have if you make it for our platform. There are only two things you cannot get. You cannot get a cinema release in France, and you cannot get the Cannes Film Festival. So I said no because I wanna go to Cannes, and I wanna have a cinema release in France.
So France clearly understood something about American dominance before this crisis that we have right now. So I just wanna say what you do is very important. It matters a lot. Hollywood is dying. There is a great opportunity for Europe.
And European cinema is not about waving some crazy flag around. It is about freedom. That is our currency. Thank you.
Nela Riehl
I will not go deeper into Swedish because we don't have an interpretation. But thank you so much. And I do think that you could see that we love being emotional here. So now switching to German again. So.
Thank you very much for all of those contributions. The coordinators now have the floor. We'll begin with the EPP. Madam Vahain, you have the floor. Yes.
Sabine Verheyen
I'd like to apologize initially because I missed the first half because I had a meeting with Metzler, so it's hard to say no to that, of course. But thank you very much. I have a couple of questions here. Both topics, Agora and the AVMSD, were important topics in the hearing today. One question for me is very important.
Which questions, which changes have there been since the AVMSD was agreed upon in 2016? So what's changed now and what's changed in the platforms as well, because there's been great development in terms of video sharing platforms. And so the question is, these classic broadcasting services, can we really differentiate those from the ones that we call social media platforms, like YouTube, for example, and others where automatically one video is shown after the other? There were quite strict requirements for broadcasting in terms of protection of young people and quotas, advertisements, whereas video sharing platforms are only half-heartedly regulated under the AVMSD. So, how necessary is it?
And this is a question that I'd like to ask Mark Cole. How necessary is it to consider how to define audio, visual media services? And whether these platforms should be, are they really platforms, or are they media services? And it's a sort of editorial-style algorithm. What requirements are there?
Here, in order to create a level playing field, where either on the one hand, there's regulate we either reduce regulation for classic broadcasters or on the other hand, could strengthen regulation for the platforms where they play within the audio visual area. And so they should be following the same rules as traditional broadcasters. So when it comes to financing and advertising, this is a very important topic. Another issue is Agora EU. This is a very important one when it comes to financing.
The commission has put everything into Agora EU, so I think it's very important, in my opinion, at least that we have clear earmarking. And so when you see this wonderful moving stories from the film sector and from the independent sector that are showing European stories, the question for me is how critical is it or how much of a risk is there to have a media plus program without a clear distinction between the different strands of news media and classic media programs for funding for films. So how sensible is it to put it all in one bucket? We do need news media, of course. Democracy is on the threat.
There's lots of disinformation campaigns that are ongoing, and there is a real requirement to have quality journalism. This is necessary at the moment, but at the same time, we do need the European films. We need to hear European stories. It's distribution for it to be accessible to everybody to see European films because this is important for our European values. And so if at some point we reach a stage where the news media is competing with storytelling, that would be a very negative development, in my opinion.
And so I believe it's important to say, yes, we can share this budget that's available for media, but it needs to be sensible between the two different strands. And so, what do you, as producers, think about that? What do the cinema operators believe? Because that's an important area of financing of European films. The film, subsidy structure within the media program isn't huge in terms of the funds.
And so I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that. And as I said, film and media as a whole is within Agora and AVMSD. It needs to be seen as more than simply a business. It's democracy. It's the basis of our democracy.
But, of course, it is also a business. And so it's clear to say without the financing opportunities and without these capacities for financing, we wouldn't get any further in this sector. So my question is, where are the necessities within AVMSD for financing out of advertising, for example, which is necessary in order to be able to finance programs. This can be children's programs, adults' programs. And so what are the necessities there or the possibilities in order to long term strengthen the opportunities financially for AVMSD and Agora?
Orador 14
Thank you. Thank you very much. And now mister Hannes for the s and d. Arnaud, it's Emma. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for giving me the floor.
Emma Rafowicz
Maybe I'd like to begin by thanking all of the speakers. I think it was really exciting to hear from you. And to quickly respond to what Mister Selleck said, it's always a pleasure to see emotions as a legislator, but also as a lover of film and a lover of your films specifically. So I feel like I'm a bit of a fangirl here. I'm delighted to have you on this panel with me.
So I'm taking the floor as the rapporteur for Agora. I feel that we agree on many aspects. Within this parliament, we've also noticed the importance, especially these days, to be very ambitious on this text, especially on the chapter of media. There's the European cultural exception as well. It's got two foundations.
Firstly, there's the regulations and the criteria, and I'll quickly talk about those as well, but also when you're talking about the AVMSD directive. So to talk about my move on to my previous speaker, it's important that we look at these platforms like YouTube, for example, and look at where we are today. Are these classic platforms, or are they rather editors where the algorithms themselves decide what we want to watch and what we should listen to? Are there contracts between some producers and platforms in order to push certain producers and certain programs or not? This is an area where we need to consider changing the definitions we're talking about.
I think it was smarter now that said that we're not talking about protectionism, or we shouldn't at least be scared of the word protectionism. Now I'm not sure when we're talking about protectionism in this text. What's clear is that at the heart of Agora, we have this idea of European cultural sovereignty. We are working very clearly on the idea of allowing, via these important programs, to express this European diversity and cultural diversity. This is via multilingualism and promoting independent cinema, and also creating an economic model that's different to what maybe exists in The United States.
Now different doesn't mean better or worse, but I'd like to look at this American experience that in Hollywood that mister Sully had. We want to push our vision of culture in Europe, cinema especially, but also in terms of books and music. We want authors or producers. We don't want them to simply be yes men. We want these producers to be able to express their stories and their cultures.
That's absolutely vital. And so in the production of this, this is for a production of a film or writing a book or even producing a music album. They should be participating in the richness of our democracy within this continent. And so I think it's here where we're bringing this debate because the Agora program, which has been fought out by the commission, I wasn't sure about this idea of the fusion with, so if I do think it's interesting, we're talking about culture twinned with the aspects of democracy and citizenship. So I think that's very important.
When we talk about defending Europe today, think about the fact that defending Europe also involves defending culture and putting up these defenses in order to protect our information and our imagination. So that's absolutely vital. Now I'm not sure that without the Europeans, there wouldn't be Netflix, but I think it's a great phrase. What I do think is that we need within European cinema, we need it to continue to be strong. This can be achieved with high budgets.
The budget negotiations are still ongoing at the moment, but it's important to state that they need to be strong. And so to come to a question now, I think that the AVMSD is the next important debate here in this House. I think the debate around quotas, about financing obligations that I'm not sure if it's going to be reopened, because there's going to be a lot of reopenings here that maybe aren't worth it. But I maybe would like to have your vision on the topic of influences that Madam Houla mentioned. We've had this debate at the national assembly in France, which ended with we can't do anything without a change of the AVMSD.
But how do you think that we can change things in the right direction without going down the wrong direction, given some of the examples that you stated?
Thank you.
Very much. Laurence, now.
Laurence Farreng
Yes. Thank you, madam chair. And I'd like to thank all the members of the panel. I would like to say something to Mr. Saleh. I'm very happy that you're here with us today, and I would just like to say that this is the place of emotions, because, yes, we deal with a lot of technical, technological issues, but there are a lot of sad emotions and passions.
Sometimes we do express emotions, which brings us together, and it helps us understand our differences. So that is a very good thing. We're talking about two things here, the AVMS and Agora EU, and they're very important texts. They deal with very clear topics that we're talking about: information media, freedom, their financing, and also creation and creativity and freedom of creativity. And all of this is set against some kind of financial framework and freedom of action.
Agora EU is going to be one of the main issues that we're going to be looking at to create links, but it's absolutely essential, obviously, that we manage to increase the budget. It's a very ambitious program. And if we want free media and free creation, these are the two pillars of democracy. And, obviously, for there are those people who feel they can save money, they'll attack this. But I would like to focus perhaps on the AVMSD, which does bring together the two main objectives.
On the one hand, we're going to be talking about good financing, appropriate financing of information media. And we know, of course, there are these major digital groups that do not really provide anything by return and that are capturing value as it were. So we do need to legislate there. And then, of course, visibility of services of general interest, which are absolutely essential. What I see myself, looking at content creators, obviously, there are those who are basing themselves on what exists already.
So I don't think the objectives, as such, are irreconcilable. It's up to the platforms to make sure they assume their responsibilities when it comes to moderating content. On culture and creation, there are some absolutely essential points, and I would agree to say that opening up quotas, financial obligations, that is almost a futile battle. But if we could better allocate what is available, I think that would be preferable. For example, somebody mentioned the definition of a European work.
That is essential. It's a very important point because at the moment, there is a vague perception of what this actually means. So the question I have, obviously, we've got films like Barbie and Fast and Furious, which are deemed to be European films when it comes to quotas. But I'm wondering whether under current laws, it's possible to distinguish properly between a European film, a Hollywood film, if you have a subcontractor director or producer. What should we change?
So that would be a first point that I would like to make. When it comes to cultural diversity, this is a question for all of you, perhaps. There are certain technical aspects and aspects of quality. We know that there is a 30% quota of European works on the video on demand platforms between now and 2028, but this has only increased by about 4%. So there is this obligation imposed on the platforms, but viewing American works is what predominates.
So according to you, what could be done in order to increase the visibility, this dimension of visibility? We know that there are these black holes of recommendation algorithms on the platforms, and they are a real problem. But what, in your view, could be done in order to confer greater visibility to European works, given the current platform context? Thank you. Thank you, Missus Muracci.
Carolina Morace
Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you to our speakers as well. In different creative areas, we're seeing increasing pressure on workers. Technological innovation could be used not to extend creativity, but just to cut costs, to cut jobs, and to produce more and more homologous content. My first question is, what guarantees should we introduce to guarantee that technology like artificial intelligence remains an instrument in the service of human creativity and not a means to substitute it or undervalue it. And then secondly, the relationship between creativity and economic power.
If a creator should adapt to the models of a few dominant actors, and what European instruments should we strengthen or could we strengthen in terms of strengthening the position of independent authors to make sure that European works can be distributed and to make sure that there's plurality of voices and opinions? Thank you.
Nela Riehl
Yes. Thank you very much to all of you for the questions that we move on to before we move to catch the eye, don't catch the eye. I'll hand the floor to the experts. Two or three minutes each, mister Cole.
Mark Cole
Yeah. Thank you very much. Dear miss Wagner, I will stick to English, not to irritate the translators and don't switch to German. I would combine some of the points that were made when it comes to what could be done and what needs to be done. So the first element is, are we at a point where we have to give up the distinction between audiovisual, either linear or nonlinear services, and video sharing platforms and, for that matter, other media services.
So indeed, imagining that we've got two frameworks like AVMST and m next to each other could actually call for saying, don't we should we not move into a direction where we have the one thing which is either media or other types of platform disseminating other types of content that is not qualifying as media. But I wanna be realistic and say, I think on short term, we are not yet at the point where these distinctions become irrelevant. But on the long term, I do see a development where it's not so much about the provider, but about the content or the information that is provided. And that's why in my intervention, which you couldn't hear yet, but I'm sure you will maybe be briefed on it. I think it is about what do we want to protect.
Orador 5
And so maybe it's not so much about the provider, but about if a certain type of content flows between producer and user, then that has to be protected. And then maybe it doesn't matter anymore whether it is disseminated by the originator. So, for example, an audiovisual media service provider or by a platform. And that could then increase indeed the responsibility for the platforms that if it qualifies as such valuable or content that is worthy of protection, that they maybe have in future also higher obligations. As I say, I don't see that as a short term repair work that can be done just by reforming the AVMSD, but it could maybe in future be more dependent on is the content relevant, and it could be cultural content like European works, but it could also be news or information content.
And if so, what comes with responsibility for that? Visibility, you know, don't mess with that content if it already has been checked, things like that. So, yes, I think on the long run, we will have to consider whether we really still have actors that are so clearly separated and that are so clearly differentiated when it comes to what type of obligations they have just because they have editorial responsibility and the others don't. If one would want to do it politically, if one says no. Actually, we think the responsibility should be increased. One could do that.
One could say editorial responsibility and organizational influence are no different. But if one does that, one also has to be aware of the fact that one has to then decide for every single element, does one want to extend the rules also to the other players, such as, for example, the audiovisual commercial communication rules also on VSPs, the European Works obligations also on VSPs. So, rather maybe in the medium term think about how can one level the playing field in the sense of competitive fairness. And there indeed, I made a point that I think I didn't mention the audiovisual commercial communication rules, but those are a very obvious example to say maybe here we have a possibility to leverage a little bit to make life easier for audiovisual media services providers, linear and non-linear, but that may not help for long term either. It may be a good situation now, but we might have to combine that with supportive mechanisms.
That's why I said not only a regulatory framework, but also help member states to find creative solutions if they can't come from the European level, on how to make the market position more sustainable of these companies. Last point, because I realized that obviously also the intervention is time-limited, when it comes to definitions of European works under current law, that is indeed one of the issues. When it comes, for example, to the co-productions, there is no final given definition that would help us to differentiate today exactly which productions have to come up with what type of involvement of European companies or European money to make it European. And there I do see a possibility to clarify that in the upcoming reform where one could turn a few of the wheels to make the definition clearer. But just be careful, these changes don't automatically mean that people will consume massively this type of content, so last point: the prominence measures, which are already in the AVMSD, but which are not defined in detail, but just they have to be prominence measures, that might also be a leverage to say, one wants to be more precise about what type of prominence has to be given.
Our algorithms allowed to, so to speak, bypass the fact that they are all visible on the homepage, but then in reality, the user actually doesn't see it anyway, because the algorithm plays out other points. That is for a first intervention from my side. Thank you.
Adeline Hulen
Thank you, missus. Yes. Thank you very much. I shall reply to the different questions that were put to content creators. I still stick to that term rather than influencers, so content creators.
All of our work has been done focusing on the reform of the AVMSD and to highlight the difference between a content creator and the more traditional audiovisual media. As I said in my presentation, there is a structural difference between the way in which they work, the way they're financed, and the fact that they don't necessarily have the same programming capacity. So our reply to the question as to how to focus on reform of the AVMSG is to calibrate obligations and make them precise and proportional. We can't just wait for a micro-influencer who has 5,000 followers. So we can't expect them to follow the same criteria as somebody else, another one who has 5,000,000 views a month.
So, obviously, one would have to have different thresholds depending on the different kinds of creator. The most important thing, and we've seen this in very many studies, is that content creators, according to the European Audiovisual Observatory, even if they are supposed to abide by certain laws and regulations, they don't know this. So I think the first step, the first stage moving to self-regulation of these kinds of operators is to provide them with training information, have this somehow included in our school curriculum, possibly. We do have to have thresholds for all emerging influencers, and there has to be some kind of compulsory training for all of them. For those who are already well established, then obviously, there's mandatory advertising transparency and then more specific constraints for those influencers who have a greater impact.
More specific obligations, perhaps for those who create information content. So we have to draw a distinction between those creators who have a defined editorial line, of which there are more and more. And then there was a second comment relating to content creators and traditional information. These are not irreconcilable, which is true because we see more and more cooperation between the two. Content creators, I myself have seen very many examples in France where content creators are journalists from more traditional press.
And then, of course, there are those who are operating in the press sector and will work together with young content creators. So the two are not irreconcilable. I think those were the two main questions that were put on this point. Thank you, Missus Ksheptovska. Microphone, please, for the speaker.
Marta Chetopska
There were so many questions. First of all, I would like to thank the parliament for the previous work on AVMSD. Without AVMSD, Europe definitely would be weaker. So for us, it's important that this system, this directive, exist. And, also, it's worth mentioning that we, independent filmmakers, are not against platforms.
We also appreciate their investment, and the film industry is also business. It's also their place for commercial projects. We also need them. But I'm asking as a producer, independent producer here, for balance and for treatment and visibility also for us, more culturally relevant content. Let's call it that way.
So I believe our responsibility is to preserve the conditions in which many forms can exist. So it's just my short answer here.
Tarek Saleh
Yes. Sorry for the comment about the emotion. It was just a recommendation from someone. I'm sure you're all very emotional. And my wife complains that I'm not emotional enough sometimes, so I'm not going to linger on that.
I mean Sweden is a horrible example in many ways. We have sold out, we made a monopoly out of our cinemas, and then the Americans bought all of the cinemas, and then they sold it to the Chinese. So cinema just went down the drain in Sweden. It's a terrible example of how we sold something that was ours for nothing. And then we invented we have this invention, Spotify, that I'm sure most of us have, where they managed to make a deal with the record companies, but they forgot to cut in the artists in the deal.
So it's amazing for the consumer, but for the artists, there is really nothing. And there's very little transparency in that system. I wanna share a little anecdote that I think is interesting. When I had finished the film Boy From Heaven, I was contacted by three superpowers. I was contacted by the Americans, the Israelis, and the Saudis.
They wanted me to do things for them: films and television series. They had basically limitless resources to do this. The Saudis, I was already involved in something. They told me a very interesting thing. They said that we were first thinking of entering the streaming wars, but we realized it's too expensive.
If it's too expensive for the Saudis, I think it's gonna be too expensive for us, too. I'm just saying. So what they said that their strategy was to actually invest in stories that they own the copyright to sell to these streaming services and platforms. Now I think the most important thing is to protect authorship. And this is something that we can learn from the French, because they have been doing this for a long time.
The whole idea of authorship. I was quite, you know, I was working on a French thing and I couldn't even have. They said, no, you can't get paid by your company for your writing services. It has to be your personal account because we want to make sure that there are no middlemen. And I thought it was interesting how much they protect authorship.
And that is a superpower in Europe right now, because the best story wins. I'm sure of that. Thank you.
Nela Riehl
Yes. Thank you very much. We now move on to the catch-the-eye round, and then you'll have some time to reply to the questions. So to those members of the committee who wish to speak under, catch the eye, you have two minutes. Mister Droyevsky.
Bogdan Zdrayevsky
Thank you. I'd like to start off by thanking all of you very warmly for all the information that you've given us. I suggested we organize this hearing, and I must say I haven't been disappointed at all because we've heard some interesting, very rich presentations. Couple of questions. First of all, to the professor, I do agree that the three directives should be seen and taken together and used, implemented together because then this will be effective.
Orador 23
And I'm wondering, however, whether we would have to have an additional directive, especially bearing in mind how the whole distribution system is changing. It's changing in such a way that it is jeopardizing the autonomy of our culture, especially in the film sector. And I'm wondering whether, as members of the European Parliament, we should do something here, something new. Secondly, each member state in Europe has their own system for supporting film production, and these systems are very different. This may be okay, but I feel that in one area, it would be useful to do something positive, and that is when it comes to taxation, the tax system.
Bogdan Zdrayevsky
I know as creators, it's very difficult to organize coproduction across Europe, given that the tax systems are so different. So perhaps we could think in terms of or propose some kind of system that would provide a common denominator across these very different systems. And I think it would be useful for film producers to do something about this. And, I would like to thank mister Sallie for his film, based in the Hilton Hotel, murdered in the Hilton Hotel 2017 because there was some, it was a very beautiful image, beautiful graffiti from this period. And, I think it gives a very good idea of how urban environments work and this kind of street art and this graffiti culture.
Marcos Ros Sempere
Thank you, chair. We that live around the Mediterranean, we recognize that human beings have their feelings and emotions. So thank you for everything that you've said, and thank you for the story you told us as well. Now the revision of the directive on audio visual and media services, I think, is to address an obvious imbalance. There are clear rules for television and the press in terms of responsibility, but platforms, social media, have content that they spread and disseminate with far fewer obligations.
Now I really believe that your contribution will be key for the revision. And I'll steal everything that you've said, and I completely agree and completely endorse what you said, what Martin, Miss Hulian said as well. We're in a completely new era here, and I think we need to say something that's quite simple. It's not nationalism or, by closing the door or by trying to recognize European sovereignty. But we do have a European identity.
What you told us about Hollywood and America, it well, that's one version we're seeing that the US might be turning against Mister Trump. But we have actors like Robert De Niro and other actors who are doing something, fighting for democracy. But I think times have changed. International relations now are ones of conflict. We now need to build culture, which is not monoculturalism, but takes on board diverse points of view.
We need transparency and an idea of democracy where all these ideas can exist side by side, and we as politicians need to be really thorough. But there needs to be all different kinds of points of view from our creators. Otherwise, what Europe will we be leaving to our sons, daughters, granddaughters, and grandsons? With the modern tech, I think what we need to do is to try together to put this revision together, to adapt and realize that times have changed. When this legislation came in, it was a different world.
Orador 24
Now the world is completely different. And thank you once again from the bottom of my heart.
Thank.
Nikola Minchev
Thank you very much, chair. First of all, I would like to thank the panelists for the insightful presentations and also for the emotions expressed, which I value a lot. So building on today's discussions, I would like to ask about the link between media literacy, civic participation, and creative freedom. Young Europeans are increasingly aware of corruption, of democratic dysfunction, of online manipulation, but they sometimes lack the practical tools to translate both their awareness and their justified frustration into effective civic engagement. The recent protests in Bulgaria showed how young people used drone footage, geolocation, live streaming, end-to-end encrypted communication channels to challenge the official narratives and to create other verifiable information flows.
Initiatives such as the Erasmus plus funded Smart Scroll project point to a more participatory and active model of media literacy, one that goes beyond identifying disinformation and helps young people understand how narratives work, how they spread, how platforms shape public debate, and how their awareness and justified frustration can be turned into meaningful civic action within the digital information spaces. With this in mind, how can the European Parliament, in cooperation with organizations like UNESCO, support this more participatory approach to media literacy within Europe's audiovisual policy framework while also safeguarding media pluralism and creative freedom? And given the nature of the question, maybe miss Hola. Sorry for the pronunciation. Thank you very much.
Orador 26
Thank you, Norils, for the support as well. Would be best suited to respond to it. Thank you very much.
Orador 28
Yes. Thank you very much. I feel that today's hearing should be entitled to a hearing of emotions, and that would be essential because the emotions are very important. Because without emotions, many things would not happen. Mister Tariq Saleh, I think we have to say this clearly.
He's a visionary of our times because the films that we have seen of his in Poland, Metropia, was shown at a film festival, actually showed what's happening now in The Middle East, I. What happens when oil reserves become exhausted, run out. So there's a lot that we can talk about, a lot of food for thought. So, thank you very much for this hearing. I do have a couple of comments and questions, but essentially some thoughts as well, having listened to all of you.
For some time, I've had these thoughts going around in my mind, especially against the backdrop of what's going on in the world. Regardless of whether we're talking about culture, geopolitics, I think now is the time when we really have to fight for European sovereignty regardless of whether we're talking about security or culture. We have nothing to be ashamed of. We have plenty to show for ourselves. We are a content where countries bringing together people who have a lot, to show for ourselves.
And as a member of the European Parliament, I do believe that most of us, the majority of us, do have this awareness even if we do come from different political groups. But I think this is very important, this specific aspect, whether we're lawmakers or creators or experts, we have to pool our strengths in order to be able to fight for what we have. And the second point, could somebody ask the speaker to remove her headphones from around her neck? All of us know that we have a wonderful directive, and we know okay. Thank you very much because it's creating feedback.
Thank you very much.
Orador 28
I think all of us have a wonderful directive, and, obviously, this directive does need to be reviewed, reformed, but it has to be done together with the other two, not separately. We should take the three together. But I think the most serious problem that we have when it comes to reviewing the AVMST is the fight against algorithms. There are certain things that we can say to the platforms, but we cannot accept algorithms. I. E, what films we should be watching, etc.
We should not lose control. We shouldn't have them controlling what we're thinking. So we are going to have to think of how to deal with this issue. And the second question or request to Madame Hulin, what you said was extremely interesting, the research that has been carried out by UNESCO. I was extremely interested and would be interested in the details of that research.
I've not heard about the research, so perhaps you can give us some information about this. So what about the people who signed up for the training that you referred to, the couple of thousand people who are the participants? So this was a response on the part of the content creators. And, obviously, they wanted to learn about the obligations, all sorts of things. And, obviously, training is extremely important regardless of what area we're talking about.
But defining what a content creator is, I think, is important as well. We still don't have a reply to this. And I think it's going to be difficult to come up with a response to this because to a certain extent, all of us are creators of our own content. But thank you very much because it's been very inspiring, and we support you in your activities. And, the most recent document, the text that we're working on at the moment, Agora EU, which is a very broad text, we're trying to do everything possible to persuade the commission that European sovereignty is extremely important, which is obviously important for you as well.
Thank you.
Nela Riehl
Thank you for all the questions. I'll give the floor to the experts before we hear from the commission. We'll start with Professor Cole.
Mark Cole
Thank you once again. And I realized I have to say at the beginning, even lawyers can be emotional. Obviously, I cannot deliver a speech that is nearly as impressive as the one of the two colleagues, but I do think there is an emotional side also to the legislative framework, and some of you with your questions have indicated it. And that is, we have to ask ourselves what type of creative and information space do we want to have in a few years? A regulation is not there for itself.
Orador 4
It has to be there for a certain reason. And one of them is we wanna protect viewers, we wanna protect minors. But if we have as a goal to protect the cultural dimension, for example, through the European works provisions, then we have to ask ourselves in a kind of reality check, is that still working? Is it still reaching the goal that we want? And that's why indeed it's true.
An evaluation also opens the door to possible improvements in the future. I just want to caution when we look at the big picture and we come to the conclusion we have to completely change the legislative framework, which maybe would be good if we would start out on a, you know, white blank piece of paper. The reality will be it's probably more realistic to go step by step because, for example, opening the DSA in combination with the audio visual media services directive is just not gonna happen in the short term. So one maybe should say, what can I repair, so to speak, or what can I improve by looking at the audiovisual media services directive as a first step? And then eventually, we can maybe align these different elements into what, as was asked by Sabine Verhain at the beginning, is a future where we don't have these distinctions.
And when I get emotional as a lawyer, it is when I think about the information space. Not only this information aspect that was discussed already, but someone of you said, what about the algorithms? How can we deal with the algorithms when it comes to the prominence of European works? And I said before, I think we have to make a decision if the main point is we want to have visibility, for example, on the opening page of a platform, and then the user settings or the user usage should not influence the algorithm to change that, then that should be precise in the law. But if you now think of algorithms and their impact in the information space, that is something that may be already in the forthcoming revisions can also be addressed in the sense of saying, we have to be aware that the information we are receiving, meaning that we actually see that, we actually consume, is changing, not only because the content has maybe been produced artificially.
Orador 5
Right? Keyword deepfakes, disinformation campaigns. But also what I see may not be a realistic feed, but it may also be influenced by factors which I'm not aware of. And here, I do see a really important and also very urgent way to respond, and I'm not sure whether AVMST would be enough for that, but an urgent way to respond because otherwise, we might be in a situation a few years from now where the younger generation will say, what's happened to all the good news? Where has it gone?
Where they can inform myself it's gone, but now I can't get it back anymore. Right? So this is really something we have to address. When it comes to the idea of can we not do something more harmonizing on the EU level? When it comes to the cultural sector, obviously, and I don't have to say this to you as the cult committee, there is always the dilemma to say, well, there is also something good about the diversity of cultures in the EU member states.
And there is not only the issue of diversity, there's also the issue of competition, but a positive competition, saying both in a regulatory sense, but also in the way how the sector can be supported. We heard before the French example. It's different from other examples. And so the more we align on the EU level, the less maybe we have this competitive search for the best solution. And that's why we have to be a bit careful.
We, in my view at least, cannot easily just substitute member states' approaches when it comes to, for example, funding or support mechanisms by only an EU framework. Alright? It can be in addition. We have EU funding programs, which are in addition to the national programs. There, I will be careful, and especially when it comes to taxation, then we obviously also have the question, how far does the competence of the European Union reach?
I think what has become clear, and that's why it can also be addressed, is responsibility and liability for content maybe beginning to merge. Okay? So the role of the ones that distribute content maybe have to be brought closer together, and that indeed is the first step that can be done in the audiovisual media services directive reform when it comes to VSPs. But I think VSPs is only the first step, because online platforms in a more general sense might be the next to take a look at. So, yes, I do think there are possibilities to go in the direction of some of the questions on doing more on the European level, but I also would caution to say not everything can be harmonized in one framework, bringing all three together or adding a fourth directive slash regulation and then automatically making everything unified on European level.
Last point, everything we do can potentially be in a regulatory framework, I mean, can potentially clash with user autonomy. And that is also something we're not allowed to underestimate. Users may want to have the choice. And the European Media Freedom Act explicitly says when it comes to user interfaces, if users decide to change the settings in the way that it is fine for their purpose, then this should be the prime element that decides on what they get to see. So, for example, a prominence measure under the audio-visual media services directive might potentially be something different than what an individual user wants.
And also that balance has to be found. Thank you very much.
Thank.
you. Miss Hulan, please.
Adeline Hulen
Thank you. Thank you to all of the members for the relevant questions. I find it really interesting that many of you now have referred to the question of emotions, because, indeed, I think platforms have also understood that. And if we think about all of the questions that we have nowadays regarding the prioritization of information through algorithms and platforms, it's also because it's actually very much relying on emotions and engagements. And what we're trying to do is to find as well an alternative way so that actually also other kinds of content are being prioritized, the public interest content.
So well, emotions are very important. And at the same time, at the moment, it's also, in a way, a kind of double edged sword in the discussions we're having around the governance and how platforms are working. When it comes to the questions of media information literacy, well, this is precisely one of the points. What we're trying to do is to develop the critical thinking of people so that they really understand beyond just the question. And you're absolutely right in pointing out that media information literacy is not just about fighting disinformation.
There has been a huge focus in the past year around these questions of disinformation, and it does make sense. But in our model curricula that we have at UNESCO on media information literacy, we have actually 14 chapters covering many competencies that go beyond the capacity to detect fake news.
Adeline Hulen
disinformation, but rather the empowerment, and it's also very much connected to the civic space and civic engagements, etcetera. So I'm happy to provide you further information on that, but also to say that our work goes beyond the work within schools. We know that curricular reform, policy reform takes a lot of time, and that's also why, for us, it's really important to combine this work with working on informal education and making sure that everyone understands that media information literacy and user empowerment, I think this was also said before, is not just a personal responsibility. It's not just about putting the burden on each and everyone to develop their own skills to, you know, address all the challenges of this information ecosystem. It's also about each and everyone's duties and responsibilities to do something for media and information literacy.
So we are working with different types of actors, including the regulators, including the policymakers, including civil society organizations, influencers, as I just mentioned, and there is here a really huge need and demand to increase. There is not much that is currently being offered to content creators at national, like, you know, at national level. What we believe is that we need to go beyond individual empowerment again and go one to one to try to get content creators trained. So we want to work with the professionalization of the profession. There is an increasing number of organizations representing content creators.
You have syndicates now. You have an increasing number of agencies, associations. Those are the ones we want to work with and developing incentives for those actors to be trained. And regarding the last question that was asked in relation to the survey that we've done, this came out of a simple state, like looking at the state of play and the different audiences report showing how much now the younger audiences are primarily relying on digital platforms to access information, and how much they actually prefer accessing information through a content creator rather than a journalist. So we were really just trying through this research that was done already two years ago, so things might have changed already, and it was a global survey, so it's not just in Europe.
It was done in 45 countries, was really to look at their skills and competencies. And many things that we have looked at in this survey were not so surprising. The fact that I mentioned that the large majority were not fact-checking information, and there are many other interesting data. For instance, the fact that for them, the way to measure the accuracy of information was the number of likes and shares, which then really goes back to all the questions around fields, you know, the filter bubbles, the resharing of this information online. But the most interesting part of it was that 30% had never had any kind of training, media information, interest in their life, but that was the message of hope.
More than 70% wanted to be trained. And we sometimes say it's very hard to mobilize content creators. They want to be paid. They want to be, but it was not true. We opened the course, and very quickly, we had more than 10,000 people registered.
And if you ask the question of definition, and I will end with this, yes, it's a different, it's a very difficult question. We took the stand on our side to define that the content creator is someone that has at least 1,000 followers. So at least is a 1,000, at least, that is having a nano influencers and that is having not a conversation with the private sphere, but is really aiming at having open communication information towards, you know, the bigger public. So this is how we start. And what we see is the large majority of content creators are small creators, not the big ones.
Thank you.
Marta Chetopska
So I will address a very interesting and, in my opinion, very important point, mentioned by mister Zdrayevsky about distribution. We might miss something very important in Europe because Germany is the biggest country, the biggest distribution audience. Then we have France, second country, Poland, and Italy. Then we have big region Baltics and Balkans and many more countries, but we don't interact. We don't watch our content, our films, while we are watching American and mostly American films and series.
And by supporting international coproduction, you are supporting interaction, and you are also teaching. You are giving a choice to your people to learn about your neighbors. And this way, you build unity. You are supporting circulating content inside your region. Its strength is building bridges between countries.
This is a very important element that we might miss because it's not a big effort. It's a long process. It won't be very quickly visible. But step by step, if you will invest in this element, you might achieve something which will also imply financially inside Europe.
Tarek Saleh
Yeah. I was actually, you know, we talk about algorithms and we talk about these social media platforms. And I think that, let's be honest about what that is. Let's, we can just go to ourselves. How do we feel when we've spent 1 or 2 hours on our phones?
Do we feel enriched, happy, uplifted? Do we feel like we have a lot of energy to go out and change the world? Or do we feel pacified and depressed? And these devices and these platforms, we give them to our children. And probably in the future, they will ask us, like, how dare you?
How could you let us smoke cigarettes when we were 10 years old? Because these platforms, the people operating them, they're not doing it out of their good hearts. Let's be honest about that. Let's talk straightforwardly about that. Now I'm a cinema fanatic, a film fundamentalist.
So bear with me with this: when we go into a cinema together with strangers and experience a story together, this goes very, very deep. This goes back to when we sat around the campfire and told each other stories, listening together, discussing afterwards. What? Did you believe that? How did you experience that?
It's such an important thing. And I think it's very important to defend the European cinemas and to create networks. They already exist, and you have supported them. So it has been absolutely essential. Otherwise, they wouldn't exist today, most of them.
In Sweden, unfortunately, most of them are now gyms. But let's, I want to end on one important note that we cannot play victims here. Europe is a big continent. It's a huge and very attractive market for a lot of actors. And if you think about the biggest arenas to present your film, no matter if you're Hollywood or China or whoever you want, where do you first want to premiere your film?
If you can choose, you go to Cannes. If you don't get accepted to Cannes, you will go to Venice. Worst case scenario, you'll go to Berlin. I'm sorry. I know this is controversial to say.
Listen. No. No. I'm just being real with you. That's sort of the situation.
Right? Now if nothing works, you'll go to Toronto or Sundance. All these three major arenas are in Europe, but Europe is not acting like that. Europe is acting like a passive, you know, victim in this. We should say, we should put demands.
I don't think it's right to let these billionaires in Silicon Valley decide what we're going to watch. I don't think that's right. I don't think it's democracy.
Nela Riehl
We're to get so much applause, as we're seeing today. I'd now like to give the floor to the representative of the European Commission, Lucia Ricardo Langarico, who's head of the unit for audiovisual industry and media support programs at DG Connect. You have the floor for three minutes.
Lucia Ricardo Langarico
Thank you very much, madam chair. Good afternoon. On behalf of the commission, we are delighted to be here with you today after this really important intervention from the speakers on such an important topic. So from the perspective of the European Commission, media policy rests on three equally important pillars. It is about democracy.
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It is really about sustaining our societal and democratic resilience. It is also about promoting and safeguarding our cultural and linguistic diversity that makes us so unique, that you have mentioned so eloquently. But it's also about building a strong, innovative, and competitive European industrial ecosystem that can thrive in the single market and also beyond our borders. And as I said, these dimensions are equally important and support one another. But it's also clear that the European individual ecosystem is going through a lot of challenges that you have presented in detail.
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The way citizens discover, consume, and engage with content has profoundly changed. And therefore, we need to think whether our legal and also funding instruments in these new contexts are still fit for purpose, because that's our main objective. So let me say a few words quickly about our current reflections when it comes to the review of the audiovisual media services directive. Because, as you know, we are working on the evaluation of the impact of the directive. And the result of this work, together with a proposal for a review, is foreseen very, very soon in the third quarter of this year.
So our objective is clear, to adapt and update the audiovisual media Services Directive to take into account this market technological evolution, user needs, and changes. And as you know, we have carried out extensive consultation processes, including dedicated workshops and recently a public consultation that closed on May 1. And this, as you can imagine, has generated a wealth of contributions that we are currently assessing, and that will inform the work ahead in the coming weeks. I just would like again to quickly point to four points that are likely to be the focus point of this exercise. One has been extensively also mentioned by you is the visibility and prominence of European content, and several member states and stakeholders have already made calls in this respect.
Another very important aspect is the sustainability of the media sector, and in particular, is the future in the advertising market because we really need to assess whether these provisions are still fit taking into account all these market developments. A third point of attention is how to proportionally and adequately address new market players. You call it content creators or influencers because they are there, and they are there to stay. And last but certainly not least, is how to ensure a very effective protection of minors. So, let me now again say a few words about our future funding programs in the context of Agora U, but I really need to start speaking about the media program that was first a standalone program and then part of Creative Europe and that for the last 35 years that we are celebrating this year has been a true successful European success story and that has accompanied really thousands of producers, distributors across the continent.
And we are particularly proud, mister Saleh, that your work, Boeing Head Heaven, was supported at the development stage by the media program, but also at the distribution phase to make your wonderful films available to as many European citizens as possible. So you are living example of the value of the media program that we are committed to supporting in the future. Something very important for us that was mentioned is that artistic freedom and editorial freedom, the two really are at the heart of the media program and will continue to be in the future because a free creative environment is paramount for sustaining our cultural diversity. And I will finish by saying that our proposal is not a revolution, it's an evolution that we will continue the demonstrated success of the past, but we will increase our focus on attracting young audiences and also serving underserved areas across the continent. Thank you.
Thank.
Nela Riehl
Thank you very much, both to you, but also to all our guests, both online and offline. We've taken a lot out of that that we'll put into our work on the future of the audio visual media sector, which will be on top of the agenda of this committee. Thank you very much, and good afternoon.
Orador 36
So for the ones who are not staying, I would ask you to leave the room quickly and quietly, so that we can continue. We'd like to welcome our new guest. So we would like to start. So everybody, please quiet, and I will again switch to German.
Switch into German now.
Nela Riehl
Dear commissioner, dear members. Moving on to our next point, I'm delighted to welcome Commissioner Yukaterina Zakhariva, who is with us for the very first time in the committee on culture and education. Commissioner Zecharia Riva, let me first emphasize that today's exchange is part of the structured dialogue between the European Parliament and the Commission. We highly value this dialogue, as it is crucial for ensuring accountability and close cooperation between our institutions. As commissioner for startups, research and innovation, your task is to steer the EU's ambition to put research and innovation, science, and technology at the center of our economy.
We would therefore like to discuss, in particular, the implementation of the commission's current priorities within the remit of our committee, as well as the preparation of the future priorities. Commissioner Zaharoova, the next MFF is highly important for our committee, especially the commission's proposal on Horizon Europe. Key aspects of the opinion of the court committee include the need for strong visibility of, and an adequate budget for, many core areas of this committee. These include research and innovation in the cultural and creative sectors, including education, training, and skills, as well as structured synergies with programs such as Erasmus Plus. A special attention is also given to the crucial role of the European universities alliances on which the court committee adopted a report last year.
Taking into account the ongoing work, how do you see these key issues? Moreover, we would also like to hear about the work done and the work to come in other areas of your commitments. In particular, strengthening synergies and collaboration between education and research, contributing to the simultaneous implementation of the European education area, but also the European higher education area and the European research area. Certain work streams such as the union of skills, such as the Maria Sklodovska Curie actions for doctoral education and postdoctoral training, and strategies to enhance the European higher education sector's global competitiveness. The European Institute of Innovation and Technology to enhance synergies and foster entrepreneurial education and skills, the new European Bauhaus, and youth mainstreaming.
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Commissioner Zaharieva, the floor is yours, and you have 15 minutes to answer all of those questions. And then we'll give the floor to the court members as well. You have the floor.
Ekaterina Zaharieva
Oh, a real honorable member. It is a pleasure to participate in this first structured dialogue. On my confirmation hearing before your committee and ITRE, I set out my ambition to build a strong research and innovation union. Education and culture are fundamental to this vision as the foundation of our universities, our youth, and our creative potential. Before our exchange, let me update you on how we are turning this vision into reality, focusing on three areas.
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First, on these three areas. First, improving our academic strengths. Europe is on track to reach a 45% target of people with a university degree by 2030. But in academia, only one in 10 staff members is 30. Four in 10 are over 50.
Ekaterina Zaharieva
The lack of new talent as many approach retirement is a risk for our competitiveness. We are determined to address this, starting by improving working conditions in our universities with the European Research Area Act that I will present in the autumn. We are considering a voluntary European model research contract, which should become the gold standard for research careers. We want to facilitate the portability of rights, improve mutual acceptance of degrees, and facilitate the establishment of joint programs. The act will also secure scientific freedom in European law to protect our researchers from political interference, in line with this house position.
At the same time, we will also support member states to strengthen teaching quality with the European competence framework for academic staff in higher education that Vice President Minsato will present next year. Second, supporting culture and education through the next Horizon Europe. Horizon is already a major source of research and development in the culture and creative industries. We estimate that under QUASTA two alone, we will have invested EUR 715,000,000, up to 1,000,000,000 when we consider the whole horizon program and initiatives like the Culture Heritage Quilt or the EAT kick on culture and creativity. We also work on synergies with Creative Europe and the future Agora EU.
Last year, we presented an ambitious proposal for our next framework program, a double budget, a simplified approach, and continuous support for culture, humanities, and interdisciplinary research. Strong links between Horizon and Erasmus Plus have allowed us to test successful initiatives like the 73 universities' alliances, which have become key actors in our European education area and research area. Finally, our proposal explicitly recognizes the role of the knowledge triangle: education, research, and innovation, currently at the core of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. And by the end of the 26th of this year, we will submit a proposal on the future of the institute. The work is ongoing, and I will update you as soon as our reflections mature.
Third, making Europe a magnet for talent. Last year, with present from the line, we launched a 500,000,000 Euro Choose Europe package to retain and attract the best minds. This support has already grown to nearly 900,000,000 with over 100 local initiatives and a new seven year grant under the European Research Council. By the end of the year, we will launch a second Choose Europe call under our Marie Skodowska Q Reactions. The results are already here.
Non-EU applicants to our recent European Research Council calls for advanced researchers doubled, and now doctoral fellowships are receiving record levels of interest. This is positive, but it shows the need for an ambitious future budget to keep up with the demand. A strong university innovation ecosystem is also essential to retain innovators here in Europe, because education is tied with competitiveness. Lastly, last week, I was in Silicon Valley, and one thing was clear. Stories of successful college dropouts starting billion-dollar companies are not the full picture.
Unicorn founders are six times more likely to hold a PhD and three times more likely to hold a master degree, which means that most of our European champions are created in university rooms and labs, not in garages. This is why we are establishing new start up and scale up hubs. They will bring together the best of Europe science parks and accelerators rooted in strong university ecosystems, giving our start-ups access to infrastructure, knowledge, and talent. Finally, backing our youth. Last year in Poland, I held my first youth dialogue, and the message of our youth was clear.
They want to benefit from green digital solutions. They want to be part of the European innovation. They want to shape Europe's future. We must honor this commitment. As a commission, we are mainstreaming youth policy across all domains.
I'm proud that Digi's RTD in Jersey organized seven out of the 43 sessions of this year's European Youth Week, with over 1,000 young people from all over Europe showing the relevance and the commitment of research innovation for our youth. And we are working on a second youth dialogue this year, this time in my home country, Bulgaria, in the autumn. Under our members, to conclude, education, culture, and youth policies are central to my vision for a strong research and innovation union. I count on your support to turn it into reality, to make Europe the best place to invent and grow. Thank you, and I'm looking forward to our discussions and your questions.
We'll begin.
Nela Riehl
Thank you very much. We will begin with a round of the coordinators, and then move to catch the eye. We'll begin with EVP with Mr. Stryavsky. I'm going.
Bogdan Zdrayevsky
To be speaking in Polish, so I'll just wait for a couple of seconds, so you can get ready. I'd like to start off by thanking you for your presentation, which has already provided certain replies to questions I wish to put, but there is still a question that I have. The work is being done on the Erasmus plus program. And, obviously, we would like to see the best program possible with sufficient funding, and also to reduce the administrative burden a little. And we want this to be a program that is as rich as possible.
So I would like to know, when it comes to the Horizon Europe program, what do you think this is going to look like? Do you think there may be some synergy between Horizon Europe and Erasmus Plus, especially in the context of cooperation between universities, given that we do have already some form of cooperation in the lines between institutes of higher education? And would it be possible to have co-financing of so-called strategic grants, I, for those students who are developing very well and doing very good research? Would it be possible to do this in Europe? It would act as a kind of relief, if you will, on the Erasmus Plus program.
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So what is the commission's approach at the moment, when it comes to linking up some of the instruments that exist under these two programs.
Hannes Heide
Thank you.
Thank you very much for your presentation. Thank you very much, as well for the opportunity to have this discussion. I'd like to begin with a plea for the creative sector because it covers over 2,000,000 people, companies in Europe and €200,000,000 in terms of value created. This sector is often not considered a strategic sector, and we're in economically difficult times. And so in the sector, we're seeing growth, which we absolutely need.
In the example, the music market has increased by 10% across Europe. But on the other hand, I know lots of actors who are successful in SMEs in the creative sector, but I hardly know anyone who has any access to investment, subsidies, and has gained those funds. And so my question is, how does the commission see this? And are there any measures currently being discussed in order to counter the current trends and in the creative sector in order to integrate funds into the creative sector as a whole? On the other hand, there's also a lot of know-how which is leaving Europe, especially towards the US.
Orador 43
And it's often European IP, which is leaving, including AI. It's even being stolen. So in your department, to what extent is that a topic? Because what we want is, because what's happening here is that startups in Europe are being weakened. Colleague Strayevsky mentioned this already, but I'd be pleased to have an answer from you on that regard.
Nela Riehl
Thank you. Thank you very much. PFE and ECR aren't present, but Laurence is here, and so I'll give you the floor.
Yeah. And then.
Nela Riehl
Okay. Well, for the Greens, I was the shadow rapporteur, and the coordinator isn't here. So I will take the floor for the Greens. The horizon is €7,600,000,000, but there's no guaranteed quota for culture or the creative sector. And so in our opinion, we want at least 40% for culture and cultural heritage.
This would be roughly 3,000,000,000 compared to 2,500,000,000 in the current program. So my question is, do you support earmarked funds for culture within the society component? And do you see within Horizon and Agora, you see a way for culture to not fall between the cracks of those two? So now I'll look for Laurence or Moratza. Madame Moratza ?
Laurence Farreng
Or Laurence, you have the floor. Madame commissaire, thank you very much for being here. My apologies. There was a very rich committee today with lots of different topics. We've had the opportunity to talk about this, and we in this committee think that the European Universities Alliance is extremely important.
It has been very successful, and it's a very recent scheme. The commission voted in favor of an analysis within Horizon. I'm the rapporteur in this matter, and I would like the alliance to benefit from this in pillar four within the European research area, but what's your approach on this area? I'd also like to raise your awareness of the importance of the future competitiveness fund. More generally, this fund should allow the financing of higher education, which should allow infrastructure research.
And this has been spoken about by your predecessor as well in Invest EU, and the EU really does need this innovation. My second topic is on Choose Europe for Science. This is a reaction to the very serious statements by US president Trump on American research, especially the ostracization of certain key parts of innovation, for example, on climate. And so I'd be interested to hear your report, your opinion on that particular initiative. And finally, I wanted to mention the European Research Area Act because you're going to present in the third semester this program, which will allow the free movement of researchers and research and technology, which is part of the fifth freedom in the report on the market.
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And so I'm interested to hear what you're going to propose in that regard. Thank you very much. Madam Morecha.
Carolina Morace
Thank you, Chair, and thank you Commission as well. When we talk about competitiveness in Europe, we have to avoid a mistake, which is thinking that competitiveness is just from the market or the ability to attract private investment. All of that's important, of course. But at the very core of European competitiveness are strong universities, quality public research, cooperation, and decent working conditions for researchers. The university alliance can play an important role here to strengthen European cooperation and to encourage mobility and to pool competencies, and bring about stronger innovation systems.
Inclusion and cooperation can be strength as well to create excellence. The same is true for Horizon Europe and their future framework programme. If we want research to contribute to competitiveness, we have to ensure that there is adequate funding, simpler procedures, and more equal access for universities, research centers, and for young researchers who are not starting off from a good position either. AI and science are now. The commission has presented the AI strategy in science and the RAISE initiative, which is an interesting direction to go in. But it's absolutely key that AI in research should remain transparent, ethical, and open to knowledge.
So the question is, what is the commission's view in terms of making sure these instruments strengthen European competitiveness without creating new inequalities between universities, areas, researchers, and ensuring that innovation remains in the service of researchers and not the market.
Thank.
Sabine Verheyen
Thank you very much, madam commissioner. At this beginning, you said that these joint programs have to be accessible and away from any political ideology. And I agree with this, so I have a few questions. Firstly, the new Hungarian government made the commission a promise. And so when can we expect Hungarian universities to once again be integrated into Erasmus, and which requirements still need to be fulfilled by the new Hungarian government for this step to be taken?
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Does the commission plan any compensation to Hungarian students who weren't able to take part in these programs during these limitations? And when if we want to move away from politics within these programs, which guarantees are they going to be by the commission to ensure that in the future, research funds are not used in political discussions against member states? Thank you. Madam Sarajevo, you have the floor now to answer all those questions. Thank you.
Ekaterina Zaharieva
Members for a really good question. I will start with addressing the first one, question of mister Zrozewski. Hope I'm pronouncing the name right. There were more or less two questions, the sine the synergies between Horizon Europe and Erasmus, plus, of course, question about university alliances, which was normal. So allow me to group the answer because we have two more questions about university alliances, then.
So I'm completely agreeing that, in general, we should strengthen the synergies between the programs. And I think this is the goal of the proposal of the new Commission. You see that we have proposed quite a bit of reforms in the next MFF. And, actually, Horizon Europe and Erasmus plus, it's which don't start from scratch. We already have some synergies between the two programs, and I'm going to give you a couple of example.
For example, we can combine Maria Skodowska Curie research training with Erasmus Mobility. Universities can use Erasmus Plus mobility schemes to complement MSCA doctoral and postdoctoral training. Or MSCA researchers can also participate in short teaching training or learning mobility periods abroad through Erasmus Plus European universities alliances, and then, allow me to, but also capacity building in higher education, it's also one of other examples for synergies. Universities can combine Erasmus plus capacity building projects with MSCA networks to strengthen research capability, governance, internationalism, and so on and so forth. Under the era and widening part of the program, currently, and in the future horizon program, we fund projects for supporting universities' transformation as well.
So all to sum up, both Erasmus plus and Horizon Europe are key tools to implement, as some of you mentioned already, the union of skills. So now I'll touch upon the question for university alliances, I think, which were asked also the same question from, I think, Laura's, yes, but I think this was also one other question. Yes. So I have received this question nonstop, not only in your commission, but also from some of the university alliances. But there are also some other universities, and I would say they are split.
I would say they're fifty fifty that are against having a year mark budget or a top up on what is which now they received from Erasmus plus for more or less gathering, organizing meetings, and maintaining the, to put it like that, university alliances. Because Horizon Europe finances research projects. It doesn't finance organizations or, like, university alliances. What, actually, it's, surprisingly, for me, it's and if we want to keep, and I believe that you also want to keep this excellence as a number one principle in Horizon Plus, we cannot dedicate money for particular organizations. That means that other organizations will start to ask, why not for us?
Why not for us? And then where the competitive principle, the excellence principle, will remain. They, and honestly, universities in general, are the main beneficiary in Horizon. So they benefit a lot. Universities who are part of the alliances have received close to €40,000,000,000 since FP7 until now.
So that means that they are really one of the main beneficiaries in Horizon Europe. And if you look at the data, they can participate as alliances in our cause. Any and even in some of the courses that we have dedicated only open only for universities and alliances of the universities, there are no alliances who actually applied as alliances in this program. They don't apply as alliances. They apply as a consortium with other universities, but they don't apply as an alliance.
So we have now a course that they are open for universities in particular, but also alliances. And we should really encourage them to use these organizations that they created to align the programs, for example, for mutual acceptance on diplomas, but also for them to create easier consortium and really to participate and apply in Horizon Europe project. So I believe that we should encourage them to use this alliance also, to participate in Horizon Europe calls. So that's I hope I was really straightforward and honest with this university, alliances question. There were, so now it's the second question on Mister Hayde about culture and creativity sectors.
And I think it is really a very important sector. It's not only very important for our competitiveness, but I believe that it's important for keeping the European way of life, which is something that we're really proud of. And I believe that one of the reasons why, and then, of course, I will speak about Choose Europe, which was also a question about Choose Europe. One of the reasons why we see this huge interest from the scientists to come to work in Europe is because of our European way of life. It's not only that we are really fast.
The scientific freedom is the guiding principle, autonomy of universities and research organizations as well, and so forth, but it's also our values and our European way of life. So I really believe it's a really very, very important sector. And you mentioned that many, many startups are leaving Europe. You know, because it's not stop mentioning, I asked Jersey. They did make a study.
And it's turned out that three to 4% of the startups are actually leaving Europe. If you read the news and if all the speeches start with that, you think that is 50%. At least, 3 to 4% of our startups are leaving Europe. Of course, yes, true. Mainly, most of them go to Silicon Valley of the United States.
Most of those three to 4%. But 97 of those three to 4%, actually, they didn't leave in general Europe because 97% of them, they have activities in Europe. And in Silicon Valley, I met with many European founders. Twice I met with European founders, and all of them, almost all of them, not all, not 100%, but really, like, 90% of them, still have a lot of activities in Europe. And the reasons why they are there, fast access to funds, much more fast and easy access from the private VCs there, infrastructure, research innovation infrastructure was also mentioned by a couple of them, and, of course, the simplification measures and our fragmentation are also mentioned by some of them.
So on creative and so we have a dedicated, actually, mentioning of the culture creativity sectors in the second year of the new proposal for our new regulation. We have doubled the budget for societal challenges in culture and creativity. And I would say Horizon Europe is really one of the main contributors to and supporters of the culture creativity sectors, in the programs. So I believe it's a really important strategic sector. Your question is also linked with that.
Should we earmark from now, budget for culture creativity? I believe this will prevent us to act at speed and flexibility if we need this. So in general, proposal of the commission is to allow us to react fast on the changing world, which is, unfortunately, really changing, I would say, sometimes too fast, and there's nonstop urgent needs that we should cover with and support the member states to cover their urgent needs, which is happening recent years. There were also questions about Choose Europe, ERA Act, and Fifth Freedom. With that, there were two three questions as well.
So the Choose Europe, I think it was a really, really very important initiative. It was very, very much in focus of the media because of the announcement of President Trump and his administration about the cuts in some universities, cuts of the programs that they do, it's not only climate change, but it's also part of the research that they do in health care sector, and so on and so forth. But the truth is that the truth Europe is mentioning in the report, and we were working on this truth Europe before actually, new because we I really believe, and the commission, believe in general that the fierce competition is about people and talent. It's not that much about natural resources. It's not that much about the funds because, actually, these high-tech companies, these innovation and research and breakthroughs are because of the talented people.
So and if you, one of the power, the strength of why Silicon Valley was created, it was because of these two excellent universities that they have, which are boosting entrepreneurship, but also because they managed really to attract the best and brightest people from all over the world. So they were a pull magnet for those people. So what we do with Choose Europe, I'm very grateful. It's true European team Europe approach. The member states really reacted immediately and very fast.
I already mentioned in my speech that there are more than 100, to be precise, 101 national and regional initiatives. Altogether, our assessment is there's about 1,000,000,000 euro of support, extra to this $909,100,000,000 that we provide through various Skudiosk but ERC mainly, Skudiosk Security and ERC mainly, as choose Europe support. So I believe that we should continue to do so. I believe that it's, of course, the funds. I believe it's also support that is needed, and we provide through the AeroAccess for housing, schools for their children, all the support that they need to relocate in Europe that the member states have, and also universities, key role in that.
So I'm really a big supporter of that, and definitely, we are going to look into the program and in the next program to continue with this Choose Europe Choose Europe initiative. On the ERA Act, I think it's one of the most important acts that we are going to propose. And there was a huge interest in our, co cause of evidence. There were more than 700 replies from organizations, from particular researchers. This shows how important for them this act will be.
And I hope that we are going to address their needs, their proposals through the stacks. I already mentioned these gold standards. Of course, it should be voluntary because I really respect the autonomy of universities, and you should respect this, but also different systems in different traditions in the different member states. But we should give the sign to those people that we really are thinking for their career development, for thinking for their prosperity, for thinking for their incomes and good quality of life, to motivate, yeah, more and more young people to become researchers and to choose this career, like proposing this gold standards. What is a really important part of this fifth freedom of mister Letta mentioned in his report for single market, and it's part of the single market, actually.
It's also mutual acceptance of diplomas, of doctoral degrees as well, which we believe is really important. It's also an important part of this, this I already mentioned, this portability of the rights. That means pension, right? For example. What was also very important for the people who answer and reply to our call for evidence was also work life balance and all the things. So we are really working on the Iraq, and I suppose that with your help, of course, and the help of our scientists and their organizations, we are going to propose a good act.
There were question, the last question, I think, was for no. There are two more questions for simplification and what we do for the newcomers, young scientists, small research organizations. I think it's really key, and its simplification is really important. I'm not waiting for the next MFF to come because it's when I became commissioner, they were three years from the current MFF. So we were really focusing on simplification.
I did hold this dialogue with the stakeholders, focus only on simplification. I spent more than three hours, and then there were really excellent proposals coming from big, small, newcomers, and participants. And we are working to simplify. We are shortening the application forms. We are working on these lump sums on less reporting.
We are working on these two stage applications, which will really allow the newcomers to apply easily. But, yeah, the goal the how we can support the newcomers and the small research organization is really simplifying, make it easier for them to apply. AI and race was mentioned. Actually, this is the goal of this science, and science for AI is to give the needed tools for the scientists. I one of my first meeting when I was and thanks for your support, elected as commissioner was to meet exactly the scientists, to an AI and both scientists who are doing AI, but scientists who want to use AI to advance with their research.
And all of them, they said, we need this training. We need these tools. We need to know how to use these tools to advance with our scientists. All these measures are actually to include more and more scientists, to help more and more scientists to use the AI for their side to support them. So it was a question from Missus Magoni for Erasmus.
I cannot answer about Erasm, but I think I am pretty much sure that it's more or less the same as Horizon. It was not politicized. It is what the new government should do. I would say, to really stop interference in the universities, political interference in universities, and how they choose. They have really to address which we were working also with the previous government.
We were telling them what's the issue and why, why was this result. So I hope that they will advance and address the words of the commission. To be precise, the Hungarian scientists were able to participate in the cause. They was not receiving the grants, so it was a possibility to be covered from the Hungarian government. So I hope the new government will address these questions very fast.
So I believe it's beneficial for all Europe, Hungary, to continue to receive, also the grants from Horizon Europe. Thank.
Nela Riehl
Thank you very much. We only have, I think, we've got two questions left, missus Princi and then missus Repp. And then you have a couple of minutes to reply.
Thank.
Giusi Princi
You, chair. I'll be speaking in Italian. And thank you, Commissioner. Thank you for the important contributions. Europe has quality research, great universities, and that's everywhere.
Now compare that with the universities in the US and China. The problem is that we rarely speak the same language at the same time, in terms of universities. The European universities alliance, I think, could be the structural response to this problem. But we need to know what works, what doesn't work. We need to have concrete evidence.
Studies carried out by Luigi Fellino, who is a professor at the engineering department of the University of Calabria, the region I come from, do show this, and I'd be happy to provide this information. Universities have public funds and European funds. And in regions like Calabria, this convergence produces measurable convergence and produces talent in the university's alliance. There is a normative framework. But my question is, is the commission intending to provide a European legal status, not just an economic status, but a legal status?
So a European legal status that would provide the conditions for growth would attract resources and real impacts for all of our regions, including those that need these resources the most.
Sabrina Repp
Sabrina. Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you, commissioner. Welcome to the culture committee, and thank you very much for the replies that you've already given.
I would like to pick up on a couple of points. You said a lot about the link between her as Erasmus plus and Horizon, but we see at the moment how funding for Erasmus plus is going. And we know that researchers and scientists who are doing things other than just education or the teachers who perhaps are doing things that aren't specifically related to research. The situation is very difficult for them. So in the MFF, we have to make sure that there is this proper link when it comes to the European Universities Alliance, because it's not all that clear.
Because, you know, if you are trying to provide some kind of teaching education, if it's not based on the results of research. In my region, there aren't very many universities, and all of them, nearly all of them, form part of the university's alliance, which is an excellent project, so we have to strengthen that. A lot of important aspects have been referred to. But when it comes to promoting research, I think it's important to give young women perspective. We've seen that when it comes to the young researchers, the higher up the chain you get as it were, there is less participation of women.
So I think perhaps we could do something about that. Perhaps, what does the commission think of this, and how can we really encourage and strengthen our young women? In my region, very many universities have a so-called civil clause, and we know that in Horizon Europe, there is now a greater tendency to focus on defense. And in the area of defense, there is still this civil clause for universities. I know there are lots of debates ongoing.
Sabrina Repp
You do, how do you deal with these civil clauses? So you, as the commissioner, how do you view this? Because if we want to have this better linking with the defense sector, how can the universities implement it? Because we don't want a situation where they're not able to participate in Horizon anymore. The final point is scientific freedom.
I was shadow rapporteur for Horizon Europe, and I saw that there was a lot of pressure, especially in terms of politics, when it comes to deciding what is relevant for research. And, obviously, there's the aspect of competitiveness and defense, and the idea is to push what is relevant to research. But that obviously runs counter to research and scientific freedom, which is something we want to protect. Obviously, you don't always end up with the result. Very often, you have to obviously make sure that it's the research itself that's in the foreground.
So how does this fit in with the efforts of the commission to have a greater focus on competitiveness? You end up with competition between universities to achieve results. So how does that marry with the principle of scientific freedom, mister Youngman?
Thank.
Marc Jongen
Thank you very much, commissioner. I have a question on artificial intelligence. We know that AI is changing working life, the economy, science at breathtaking speed, and nobody is going to be successful in the future unless they have AI skills. And we know that when it comes to race, we have this project that has been started. But scientists, researchers, critics, experts, have said that this is 100 times too small, at least, when it comes to its overall volume.
In the pilot phase, €100,000,000 was invested in this, and the US and China are spending billions of euro a year on the area of AI. So this is from the state public, and I think the EU is going to be left behind when it comes to AI. So, what are you thinking of doing? What are you doing to prevent this? The race program, I think, is due to come on stream in 2028.
So until then, we're completely decoupled from what's going on, and we are going to end up lagging behind. Should we not be looking at this with greater urgency? So what are you going to be doing over the next coming years? I'll hand the floor back to you, Commissioner. We have already run over.
Orador 49
So if you could be brief, please. I know that's difficult, but if you could be as succinct as possible.
Ekaterina Zaharieva
Thank you very much for your questions. I will with the second and the third, and then I'll ask my colleague to help me with the first one because I'm not sure that the translation was correct. New beautiful Italian language. Sorry for that. So I will end with answering your question.
I think I already addressed university alliances. I completely agree how important universities are and that we have to help them to use this alliance. It's not only as aligning their programs or acceptance to put it straightforward, increasing the trust between each other, which will help finally to this mutual recognition of diplomas, of acceptance of qualification, which is so important for fifth freedom as well and free movement of knowledge and researchers as well. So I'm really agree that it's an important initiative that we should support them to use these alliances to form a consortium, to work on a joint project, and Horizon is a program for research and innovation. It's a program which finances a project of research.
So, for the scientific freedom, this was really, I think, important question. I think that, of course, we should support our universities to strengthen their links with the private sector. I believe it's beneficial for them. But we should also keep our focus on fundamental research, and this is curiosity-driven research. And today, when I did have one of the meetings when I explained, what one of the strengths of Europe is this curiosity driven research.
And sometimes, we invested really in a business. Sometimes, yes, there may not be results, but sometimes there may be results that are really great, like quantum, for example, fusion, the vaccines, which started, I was informed today, like a study for beating cancer, but at the same time, save millions of lives during COVID. And this was possible because of years of investment in curiosity-driven fundamental research. And we believe through scientific freedom, we're going to protect it. But it doesn't mean when the governments or the businesses request the scientists to work together with them, that interference in scientific freedom.
Because, actually, many scientists, they really want to contribute to the society, and they also need this close relation with the private sector because they know what the problems are and how they start working even from really low tier level to find solutions on their problems, the real problems with the private sector. So I believe this is not controversial to scientific freedom. I think it's really something that we will boost the scientific freedom and protection of the universities. Universities. And I have visited many universities, research organizations who are doing fundamental research, like, fundamental research, really low tier level, but they really work close and hand in hand with the private sector.
And this actually also supports their lapse because they have more money. They have more investments there, both from the governments, but also with the private sector. So this is really beneficial. And the researchers, their students are quite happy because they also have a possibility to work closely with the private sector to experience this closely and eventually, to create their own very successful startups and breakthrough technologies. So I really believe that it's important to increase the synergies.
About the AI, Horizon is just one of the initiatives. We did invest it much more in this Horizon euro, in Horizon Europe, but also in our digital program for AI. I cannot give you now exact data, but I know that we did invest, like, only in the couple of billion euros only in the AI startups. The rise, it just actually, our response how to increase the synergies between the member states to pull the resources from the private sector. So it's, this is this code that you mentioned, 100000000.
But in general, during the whole program, we did invest billions for support, AI, startups, AI, research. And, just to mention also, the infrastructure, the computing power, the gigafactories, the beef before the AI factories. So, before the supercomputers, these are all our investments in AI. But I am agreed that we should do it fast, and it's really important that we should invest, and as I said, we increase the synergies and also more investment from the private sector as well. Because the biggest investments in United States, for example, come from the private sector.
It didn't come from the government. And all the announcement huge like, I forget the billions. There were 100 billions of dollars. There were actually investments coming from the private sector. So if you want to boost this, we should really also work hand in hand with the private sector, establish the for this, and that's the goal of RISE, to support, to combine, to increase the synergies, and pool the resources, compute, data, money, and, of course, talent.
I would also I think we should think when we talk about, say, about energy, but that's how the story is the fifth layer, which is energy that we need to drive this big, big data centers and big computers. And that's the first question.
Orador 53
Alliances. The commission proposal legal status for university alliances.
Ekaterina Zaharieva
Look. For diversity alliances, in general, it's an educational, it's an EVP Minzato, so I don't want to speak on her behalf. Maybe next time, if she's here, ask her. So it's not in my portfolio. It's not in my power.
So, of course, you can ask her if she is added value. She can answer and initiate this.
Nevertheless,
Thank you very much.
Ekaterina Zaharieva
Agenda. It was really sorry that I forgot, missus Reps. One minute.
Yeah. Because his interpreters are leaving.
Ekaterina Zaharieva
I believe that there is a huge need. Not only that is not fair, but it's bad for the economy. If you see the data, unfortunately, no matter how much effort we do, it's still, especially in the higher position, especially the high academic position, especially as president of the universities, as professors, we are not doing great. Mhmm. Horizon here shows that we can do it better.
We have quotas, as you know, and it's even above 50% participation of the women in the project groups, in the working groups, in the evaluators. In the evaluators, we are still not 50%. We try, but this is based on all also on applications that we received, but we should really motivate the women. We are working on the action plan for women and girls in research, innovation, and start-ups because innovation is really worth it. It is a really bad situation, I believe. We should do much more.
We received a lot of efforts, and we are very close to propose this action plan, very concrete measures to boost them. But in general, we know career perspective, work-life balance, kindergartens, all the things that you know, violence, gender-based violence in work. So we are working from that, and I believe it's really, as I said, something that we should continue, our efforts and our focus.
Nela Riehl
Yes. Thank you very much. I think the time has shown that we could have discussed this for a lot longer. We look forward to your next visit. The next committee meeting will take place here in June in Brussels.
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