The European Parliament approved a resolution for the European Commission to create a European Artist’s Statute, recognize “the intrinsic value of Culture” and include the cultural and creative sectors “in all the instruments of financial support”.
The resolution approved on Tuesday in the European Parliament concerns the “situation of artists and cultural recovery in the European Union”, in a pandemic context, with MEPs stressing that “a European framework for working conditions in industries and cultural and creative sectors”.
The European Parliament recalls that this is a sector in which professionals and artists “mostly work part-time and often depend on irregular and mixed income from different sources” and that the covid-19 pandemic has exposed “the vulnerabilities” of the sector: “Intermittency, heterogeneity and instability”.
MEPs therefore urge the European Commission to move forward with the creation of a European Artist Statute, not least because there is already specific legislation in several Member States, but it “varies considerably”, which “complicates the mutual recognition of the status of the artist and workers in the cultural and creative sectors”. “Authors, performers and all cultural creators must have access to guaranteed minimum social security standards, particularly in terms of employment, health insurance and pension funds, so that they can fully concentrate on their artistic process and creativity” , defends the European Parliament.
In addition to these labor issues, the European Parliament lists several calls related to the Culture sector, namely that the Member States of the European Union comply with the transposition of the directive on copyright, and that “initiatives in the field of gender equality are effectively implemented , inclusion and integration in the fields of culture and audiovisual”.
In Portugal, the Statute of Cultural Professionals was approved by the Council of Ministers on April 22, with a public consultation being followed until June, with the Government receiving 72 contributions. On July 14, at a parliamentary hearing, the Minister of Culture, Graça Fonseca, said that in September, meetings with entities that were involved in the process of building the statute would be resumed.
The proposed State Budget for 2022 includes, although without an estimated expenditure, the “implementation of the Statute for professionals in the field of culture, which aims to extend unemployment protection to all professionals – including self-employed workers and employment contracts of very short duration”. On the 14th, the prime minister, António Costa, revealed that the Statute of Cultural Professionals will go to the Council of Ministers this Thursday, the 21st, “following for public debate”.