This opportunity should not go without all of us in the House recognising that it is a historic occasion in the Dáil, though not in the Oireachtas. This is the first report of the Joint Committee—an all-party committee representing all parties in the Oireachtas, and the Independents—to be debated here or presented to the Dáil. The Seanad has debated two such reports, one on youth unemployment and one on the EMS.
Lest the full membership of the House have forgotten, the Joint Committee members are not people who are occasionally taken from buses in Luxembourg or who disappear until they have to come across here from Kildare Street, sometimes in the rain, for divisions: the Joint Committee are a working party of this Parliament and not some extension of the Brussels bureaucracy.
I have the honour and the duty today to present to the House this report of that committee. The fact that we are talking about the cultural sector does not indicate any political priorities as far as the Joint Committee are concerned. Rather does it indicate that the two previous reports which we processed could not be debated in the House because the Standing Orders of the Dáil had not been amended to take account of such reports as this coming before us.
Recognising the fact that this Parliament is slowly but surely dragging itself into the 20th century, we have made progress to the extent that the first Joint Committee produced 59 reports for this House and the other House, not one of which was debated or reported to either House in the last Oireachtas. Therefore, in fairness to the development of modern parliamentary democracy, the records would be bereft if these points were not put on the record.
I wish to clarify my own position and that of the other members of the Joint Committee. The role of any member, irrespective of the side of the political divide he or she may come from, in the context of presenting such a report, is a political role but not a partisan one. Therefore my presentation will be a political but not a partisan one. I will move quickly through the document.
This is an opinion of the Joint Committee on a document produced by one of the members of the EEC Commission, Mr. Vouel, at the request of the EEC. The reference number of the document is R/2982/77. It was produced at the end of last year and it was presented to the EEC Economic and Social Committee for internal comment, and simultaneously sent out after EEC processing to all European Parliaments, including our own. The Joint Committee, on behalf of the Oireachtas, undertook to review the document and to comment on how we see it as affecting Ireland. The report is entitled "Report on Community Action in the Cultural Sector", and some definitions are in order as to what we mean by "the cultural sector". I will be referring to the report from now on as "our report". Our report defines it, using the same definition as the Commission, as "the socioeconomic whole formed by persons and undertakings dedicated to the production and distribution of cultural goods and services". The sector covers not only cultural activities such as drama and painting, and cultural products like books and sculpture, but persons engaged in cultural activities, such as dancers and musicians.
There are other areas of cultural activity which are not included in the report, not because they are not deemed to be cultural activities but for other reasons as perceived by Mr. Vouel and his colleagues. I refer specifically to the cinema industry and television, which are major areas. The Commission were charged with seeing how that sector of European activity can be brought into the framework of the Treaty of Rome, and how those aspects of the cultural sector can be harmonised in accordance with the political objectives of the Treaty of Rome.
The report falls into two parts, the allocation of work and the description of how the cultural sector performs as laid out in my earlier definition. The first part is related to how the Treaty of Rome can be applied to the cultural sector—how the provisions of the free movement of goods and services can be applied specifically to the cultural sector, and which areas have got to be identified, and how the objectives of the Treaty of Rome can be implemented. We have identified these in our report as follows:
(a) Freedom of trade in cultural goods,
(b) Combating thefts of cultural goods,
(c) Freedom of movement and establishment for cultural workers,
(d) Training periods for young cultural workers,
(e) Harmonisation of taxation in the cultural sector by
(i) the removal of tax barriers to the development of cultural foundations and patronage
(ii) the setting up of uniform VAT rates for cultural goods throughout the EEC which should be kept to reasonable limits, and (iii) the removal of discrimination in the taxation of cultural workers,
(f) Harmonisation of laws on copyright and related rights by
(i) the harmonsation of wide areas of copyright to ensure that cultural workers would have the most favourable treatment to be found under the existing laws of any member state.
(ii) Community-wide operation of a public lending rights scheme,
(iii) measures to improve the remuneration of authors, performers, play-wrights, composers, literary translators, sculptors and painters as well as to encourage the work of craftsmen,
who, in my personal view should be called "craftspeople". Finally the social aspects:
The adaptation of social security systems in the Community to the special problems of employed and self-employed cultural workers.
They are the areas that have been identified by the Commission, and which we support, which can be integrated readily within the provisions of the Treaty of Rome. There are clauses within that Treaty which can be applied readily to all of those sectors. I will not go into the details of how they will be applied because we are at an early stage in this entire process. That is the scope of the document in that area. It is the specific application of the provisions of the Treaty of Rome to that area of the cultural sector.
In response to the communication provided by Commissioner Vouel, the second part of our report relates to the broader aspect of the consolidation of European culture. On behalf of the Committee I should like to talk about the framework of thinking that permeates this area. It is true to say that the Common Market is simply that. It has been described by other people as a community of merchants rather than a community of people. Since the development of social objectives, notably at the Paris Summit of 1972, has given a new horizon to the European Community, the narrow limitations imposed by the Treaty of Rome have broadened to take on a wider perspective than that of the creation of a European community. Within that objective the question of a European culture and the promotion and strengthening of a European culture has a major role to play.
The second part of our report and the second part of Commissioner Vouel's report talks about measures and recommendations of a general nature which do not necessarily fall within the context of the treaty of Rome but which certainly fall within the objectives of the EEC as of now, measures which should be looked at and which, hopefully, could be implemented in the near future. It would be dishonest to describe it otherwise, because in the process of decision-making we are a long way from the stage when any of these proposals will become EEC directives. Any talk that gives any other impression only serves to devalue the role of the Community in that regard.
What areas are we talking about when we talk about the broader aspects of European culture? First, the preservation of the architectural heritage by the promotion of specialist training for restorers and nuclear conservation techniques. Second, contributing to the development of cultural exchanges involving the evaluation of cultural advance, the organisation of European rooms in museums and exchanges between museums. Third, co-operation between the cultural institutes of member states. Finally, the promotion of socio-cultural activities at European level.
The Joint Committee have reviewed the aspects in relation to the first part of the document and have made a number of recommendations. We believe that these points are the best position that can be adopted at this time by an all-party committee of this House. We have added a number of proposals to the second part of the report, but before I deal with them one point should be politically underlined: as far as the Joint Committee are concerned, people involved in the cultural sector of this or of any other member state are, as the report states, cultural workers. They should have the same rights and obligations as other workers. The cultural worker community or the artistic community in either the plastic or performing arts has for many years sought that status. To the extent that the views of the Commission go a long way towards giving effect to that aspiration, we understand that the proposals to harmonise legislation and the treatment of cultural workers with regard to, say, social security have been welcomed by the trade union interests involved and by the Arts Council, who have a statutory obligation in this field. The proposals made by the Commission and the proposals on which we are commenting have been welcomed in principle by those who are directly involved in the cultural sector.
Time keeps me from going into detail on these matters, but the essence of what I am saying is correct. What have we said in extension to that and what have we said in regard to the overall aspiration of strengthening European culture? Two things have emerged which are of direct interest and relevance to this House. The first is that we are anxious to promote cultural exchange within the nine member states. As this House has the distinction of being the first parliament in Europe to fund a State theatre, we are particularly anxious that State theatres, such as the Abbey Theatre, should be able to participate in a programme of cultural exchange with their sister theatres in the EEC. To flesh this out it is envisaged that it would take the form of either directors or back-of-stage front-of-house personnel, as well as actors, participating on an exchange basis in productions in France, Germany and elsewhere, with the declared objective of strengthening European culture by enhancing the understanding within each member state of the culture of other member states. We are not seeking the lowest common denominator in terms of European culture. On the contrary, European culture can only be fully understood when the individual richness and value of national cultures which make up the nine member states is fully appreciated and understood by all. There is a certain tendency to feel that Europeanisation means some kind of levelling down and, therefore, the reduction of national individuality. On the contrary, the theme of this document and of our report is that you could only start to talk of a European culture in realistic terms if you talked in terms of consolidating and improving national cultures.