The animation industry has been supported over the past years through a wide range of schemes of Creative Europe MEDIA sub-programme, from co-production markets like MIFA Annecy, Cartoon Forum and Cartoon Movie to support for TV, development, distribution and market access.
The publication today of the European Animation Plan by the industry is a very important step and comes at a very timely moment. This is one of the actions that were envisaged by the Communication "Promoting a fair, efficient and competitive European copyright-based economy in the Digital Single Market" that accompanied the Copyright reform.
One of the accompanying measures was aimed at placing a particular focus on the European animation sector. It was for this reason that the Commission launched a dialogue with the major European animation studios and interested stakeholders to discuss how this sector could scale up. Training needs, global trends in the field of animation, co-productions, promotion and other aspects impacting the marketplace were amongst the topics discussed.
The Commission is very pleased that these meetings, including a European Film Forum event at MIFA in Annecy in June 2017, have culminated in industry getting together to agree on a European Animation Plan.
This Animation Plan explores how the sector could upscale and identify the challenges it is confronted with. It identifies three objectives for the next five years particularly: to foster the global reach of EU animation; to make Europe an attractive workplace for European talent and talent from abroad and also to make access to finance easier.
The Commission will reflect on how best the MEDIA sub-programme can respond to these objectives not only in the current Creative Europe MEDIA sub-programme but also beyond 2020. By the end of this year, the European Commission will report to the European Parliament and Council on its mid-term evaluation of the current Creative Europe programme and will put forward recommendations to make the programme more impactful in the coming years up to 2020.
Moreover, the Commission has started a reflection on the future of the Creative Europe MEDIA beyond 2020 and the publication of this European Animation Plan is therefore timely in the context of the on-going dialogue with the audiovisual industry.