Trade Negotiations Insights • Volume 8 • Number 1 • February 2009

As EPA ink dries

What’s next for our creative sectors in the Caribbean?

by Josanne Leonard

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It’s now three months since the controversial CARIFORUM-EU Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) was signed in Bridgetown, Barbados, even as debate raged across the region about the broader implications of the EPA and our state of readiness for benefiting from potential opportunities. But, whatever the merits and demerits of the EPA, the dye is now cast. The region has entered 2009 with the ink dry on the deal and fully wedded to the EPA. So what now?

While by no means exhaustive, this article attempts to highlight some of the EPA text on the Protocol on Cultural Cooperation, with a focus on the implications for the region’s cultural industries and entertainment sectors.

First, it is important to note that historically the EU has never permitted market access commitments in the audio-visual sector and the EPA is no different. This is a jealously guarded industry, integral to their sense of culture and identity. And, it is supported by a range of cross-cutting policies, incentives, and institutional mechanisms designed to buttress, support, and strengthen its competitiveness. Most notable is the MEDIA 2007, which runs until 2013 providing 755 million Euros to Europe’s audio-visual industry.

But what the EPA does provide, according to the officials at the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM), is a legal right to market access involving commercial enterprises in the entertainment sector – with the exception of the audio-visual industry. In the EPA, a special Protocol on Cultural Cooperation – which CRNM saw as an opportunity for extracting some development assistance – was thus agreed. The CRNM states that the objectives of the Protocol are “to improve the conditions governing the exchanges of cultural activities, goods and services and redressing the structural imbalances and asymmetrical patterns which may exist in trade in these, between CARIFORUM states and the EU.”

Yet, before the Caribbean can fully capitalise on the Protocol, policymakers and those in the creative sectors must review and extensively discuss what strategies are needed to understand the full implications of its provisions. This should begin with a proper assessment of what is in the Protocol and how it can be used: for example, what Caribbean producers and originators of audio-visual content will require in order to gain better market access to distribution platforms in the EU; what collaborations exist – if any – with EU firms and/or producers; determining possible threats and opportunities for Caribbean producers and distributors; and identifying areas for collaboration (technical cooperation, co-financing etc).

What is immediately clear, however, is that the following is necessary if our creative sectors are to realise any benefit from the EPA:

Local Content: We have to recognise and admit that, for a variety of reasons, we have developed minimal content, and as such, we have little or nothing to market.

Co-production Agreements: Apart from Jamaica, which has an agreement with the UK, the region has no co-production agreements with EU countries. Experts say that even the Jamaica-UK agreement is not forward looking enough given one glaring omission: new multimedia platforms.

Financing: There are few financing instruments for the audio-visual sectors.

Incentives: As with financial instruments, there is very limited public policy space to encourage investment in the regional audio-visual sector.

Culture Policy: Regional harmonised policies in the areas of culture, media, and telecommunications are needed.

In a recent briefing on the EPA and opportunities for the audio-visual sector, a senior CRNM official contended that the region has a two to five year window to get into the game; we are behind on the policy and regulatory fronts, so if these pronouncements about the competitive advantage of our creative sectors are to mean anything, we must move to put our collective houses in order.

And given the collapse of the traditional commodities and financial markets, there could be no better time to turn inward and support home grown music, fashion, design, film and television, and the rest of our cultural sectors, which can provide new avenues for sustainable growth and employment. Industry must now aggressively roll out discussions in conjunction with our culture, technology, investment, and trade officials to determine what we want to extract out of the EPA deal.

On the policy front, this is the time for our decision makers to champion medium and long-term measures in support of knowledge-based and creative economies. More importantly, our governments must ensure that National Indicative Programmes place creative industries at the centre of domestic development agendas.

The EPA may have been seen by some as a happy-ever-after fairy tale to boost the fortunes of creators and creative enterprises (mainly micro and small) with a desire to survive the corporate filter that has all but destroyed local content and creativity. Because of the EPA, we are now engaged in earnest debates about quality and quantity of local audio-visual content. Yet for the last three decades, we have been contented as new independent states to view ourselves through the foreign media prism. Yes, even as we grumbled about the quality of our culture, we somehow lacked the perspective and commitment necessary to identify the importance of our local media institutions to support our cultural, political, and social development.

So possibilities in the EPA will remain exactly that – possibilities – if we do not move to decisive and strategic action. With all the ‘sexiness’ around creative industries, this is the time to recognise that our cultural sectors not only add value to our tourism sectors but may very well be the key to developing a new and sustainable brand of tourism that protects our fragile island environments.

Author: Josanne Leonard, Director of Miribai Communications, is a leading Caribbean Media, Communications and Entertainment Consultant and Chair of the Caribbean Creative Industries Business Forum, an informal industry based network of regional Entertainment Professionals.

Notes
This article was published in the January 2009 Trinidad and Tobago Review. You can email your comments to miribai@tstt.net.tt See www.myspace.com/josanneleonard