Saying European television can be a force for “cooperation and democracy”, Council of Europe Secretary General Alain Berset unveiled a landmark co-production agreement at the Series Mania TV festival on Thursday.
The treaty, the Convention on the Co-production of Audiovisual Works in Series, was adopted by the Council of Europe, the continent’s leading human rights organisation, last November. It is designed to support independent co-production of series for TV and streaming platforms by simplifying administrative procedures and making it easier for independent producers from different countries to work together and obtain state media funding in their countries.
The political aim of the treaty is to encourage “cultural cooperation across borders.” [fostering] A richer mix of languages, perspectives and storytelling traditions in serial works is available to citizens in Europe and beyond.
In an impassioned speech at Series Mania, Berset said Europe had “forgot how to tell its story” and needed tools like a treaty to give it financial and regulatory support to continue producing series that best represented European ideals.
Speaking after a European Screenwriters’ Union report warning of attacks on freedom of expression by European far-right governments, Berset said the treaty was “a strategic signal of the resilience of European production, and a reminder that we are stronger when policymakers, public media and creatives move together.”
Berset, along with delegates from about a dozen other countries, will officially sign a joint cooperation treaty that goes into effect at Series Mania. The agreement will establish a series of co-production rules similar to those already in place for feature film co-productions in Europe. The legal framework will also clarify rules on revenue sharing, access to financing and data transparency.
Berset said in his speech that European stories are not just consumer products, but represent the cultures and values of the continent. He added that if European viewers, as citizens, are “reduced to consumers and dialogue is reduced to data, then before you know it, Europe becomes a market of 700 million people rather than a continent that can tell its own story.”
Berset ended by asking European innovators to remember that “national identity is not nationalism” and “protection is not protectionism.”
“The outside world is not waiting for culture to catch up, it is already here in this room, on our screens, in the stories we tell,” he said. “It’s in the stories we fail to tell each other. It’s in our ability to imagine the future together, which is why democracy is the greatest story of all.”
