The 60th Session of the EAO Executive Committee Confirms Morocco’s Presidency for 2020
The 60th session of the European Audio-visual Observatory (EAO) Executive Committee gathered the 41 member countries and the EU on November 8th at the Europe Council headquarters in Strasbourg. This session was marked by the confirmation of assigning the 2020 presidency of the Committee to Morocco, the only non-European member of the Observatory, represented by Mr. Jamal Eddine Naji, Director General of the High Authority for Audio-visual Communication (HACA) and President of the network of UNESCO Chairs in Communication (ORBICOM). After France presiding this year in the person of Ms. Elizabeth le Hot, Director of the French Ministry of Culture, who conducted the work for this 60th session, the 2019 presidency of the EAO’s Executive Committee was assigned to Italy
As usual, the work of the Executive Committee approved, via voting, the different reports submitted by the Director General of the Observatory, Ms. Susanne Nikoltchev (Germany) and her team of directors, including Ms. Maja Cappello (Italy), an official at the Legal Information Department, and Mr. Gilles Fontaine (France), an official at the Markets Information Department.
The reports and projects presented during the EAO deliberative assembly mainly focused on the fiscal year 2018, the draft revised budget of 2019, and the action plan for until 2023.
This session also witnessed the rebound of Greece after freezing all activities in the Observatory due to the unpaid fees of membership in this institution, that is under the Council of Europe supervision, and is financially maintained by the European Union ( EU Commission) and the membership fees.
During this session, the debate of the present delegations, including some representatives of EU countries, also tackled the organizational topics related to the structure of the Observatory and other issues on vogue such as: collecting data on the audio-visual sector and cinema in certain regions of Europe or adjacent countries (such as morocco), the new paradigms of the digital era regulation, the relation between media and the “creative culture industries”, the new directives of the EU concerning the audio-visual sector and all the domains related to it, etc.
The question of regulation in the digital era was proposed by Mr. Naji in order to be the main debatable theme of the Executive Council Session of June 2020, after the upcoming one on June 2019.