Antonios Vlassis
Researcher, Center for International Relations Studies, University of Liege, Belgium
The political dimensions
of the CDCE
Discontinuities and steps forward
Introduction
 Convention on diversity of cultural expressions: cultural
public policies; specificity of cultural goods and services;
culture in the development policies; reinforcement of the
international cultural cooperation.
 Political dimensions of an international law instrument
 CDCE within the global governance of culture
 CDCE as a part of a whole picture
 Global governance of cultural industries: system for
organizing the relations of power and of regulation at the
world level, affecting several aspects of cultural goods and
services (creation, production, distribution, exhibition, etc.).
Introduction
 An international law instrument is not built and it is not
implemented in a vacuum
 Understanding the nature and objectives of the CDCE
 A. CDCE’s building
 B. CDCE’s implementation
 C. CDCE’s perspectives
A. CDCE building
 Cultural
exception/internationalregional economic
integration
 General Agreement on
Trade in Services
 North Atlantic Free Trade
Agreement
 Negotiations on a
Multilateral Agreement on
Investment
 Culture and
development/UNESCO
 MONDIACULT, 1982
 World Decade for Cultural
Development
 Report “Creative Diversity”
 Stockholm Intergovernmental
Conference on Cultural
Policies for Development,
1998
A. CDCE building
 The diversity of cultural expressions is built both on the overrun of a
cultural exception from trade negotiations and on the creative diversity,
conceptualized by UNESCO
 Economic globalization and cultural identities/cultural policies
 Big coalition of actors
 International negotiations and controversial points
 Compromises and ambiguous consensus
 Implementation based on the loyalty and the good faith.
B. CDCE implementation
 The CDCE is the first multilateral legal instrument to include
concrete provisions for the link between culture and
development
 The IFCD is one of the main tools of the CDCE for promoting
sustainable development and poverty reduction in economically
“developing” and “least developed” countries through the
development of cultural industries and of cultural sector.
 Big hopes and low resources
 Irregular contributions
 EU-UNESCO expert facility program
B. CDCE implementation
 Trade-culture interface: US bilateral agreements challenging the
CDCE objectives.
 Lack of expertise, lack of pressure, lack of political will, culture as
secondary priority, lack of alliances.
 Seven countries - Oman, Panama, Bahrain, Guatemala, Honduras,
Nicaragua and El Salvador - have not submitted specific reservations,
whereas six countries, namely Australia, Singapore, Chile, Costa
Rica, Peru and Colombia have developed some reservation lists for the
cultural sector.
 EU protocol on cultural cooperation: new policy instrument in
order to promote the CDCE via trade agreements.
 Cariforum, South Korea, Central America, Peru/Colombia.
 Beyond the dichotomy ‘inclusion or exclusion’ of cultural goods
and services within the agenda of trade negotiations.
C. CDCE perspectives
 Digital cultural services, US administration and new trade agreements
 Transpacific Partnership including 12 countries; Transatlantic Partnership
between European Union-US; Trade in Services Agreement including 24
economies.
 Traditional cultural services # Digital media services
 2009-2013: Apple iTunes division from 4 billion USD to 16 billion USD;
Amazon (sales audiovisual media) from 7.6 billion USD to 13 million USD;
YouTube from 0.5 billion USD to 5.6 billion USD; Netflix from 1.6 billion USD
to 4.3 billion USD.
 US surplus in cross-border trade in audiovisual services: 13.6 billion USD in
2012 (11.4 billion USD in 2008).
 Prevent the capacity of States to take regulatory and financial policies within
the digital cultural sector
C. CDCE perspectives
 International debate on the place of culture within the post2015 development agenda
 Broad and composite coalition of actors
 Group of friends ‘Culture and development’ (UN Assembly)
 Agenda post-2015: mentions to culture in the broadest sense
are minor
 Reluctance and resistance from the majority of European and
North-American countries
In closing
A. Adapt the CDCE to the digital challenges
Two reports, the first prepared by the ‘International Network of Lawyers for the Diversity of
Cultural Expressions’ (Quebec’s Laval University) and the second by the ‘Research
Center on the integration and globalization studies’ based at the Quebec University of
Montreal.
Making the CDCE’s normative framework consistent to the development of new
technologies
Challenge: convince a big number of Parties about the importance of the cultural policies
in an digital era, something that is not so evident for some countries.
B. Maintain the largest policy space as possible in the cultural field, by excluding
commitments in cultural sectors from new trade agreements.
Exclusion covering the digital cultural sector
Building a common position on the way the Convention should be applied to the
« trade and culture » debate particularly regarding the digital sector
In closing
C. The CDCE should play a key role for the persuasion of
many international actors about the importance of culture in
development policies
Key instrument in order to prove and to show the multiple
impact of culture at the grassroots levels
D. Debate based on the distinction between traditional
cultural services and new cultural services
This distinction would mean the death sentence of the cultural
policies, which would be confined only to the traditional cultural
services (Lescure Report 2013)
CDCE: main law instrument in order to maintain the unique
treatment to the cultural services.