The European Union’s planned Creative Europe framework programme should be made accessible for the EU Neighbourhood countries, according to professionals from Ukraine and Moldova.

The Tandem Cultural Managers Exchange, which was initiated by the European Cultural Foundation (ECF), MitOst, the Centre for Cultural Management in Lviv, the Soros Foundation Moldova and Culture Action Europe have called on the European Commission, the European Parliament and EU Member States – as well as the governments of the EU Neighbourhood countries – “to work together to remove all potential obstacles to international cultural co-operation in order to ensure the effective implementation and maximum impact of the Creative Europe programme.”

Moreover, Tandem recommended that the EU Neighbourhood countries sign the Memoranda of Understanding with the EU as soon as possible “in order to allow the cultural operators from their countries to benefit from the Creative Europe programme fully and to recognise that such agreements should be seen not only in terms of financial benefits but above all in terms of networking, exchange of best practices and peer learning that can have a long-lasting impact on the cultural sector in their countries and beyond, as well as on socio-economic development.“

In a separate development, Doris Pack, chairperson of the European Parliament’s Committee for Culture and Education, asked MEDIA Programme chief Aviva Silver at a sitting in Brussels last week to clarify the ongoing debate about the future status of the MEDIA brand and the use of the MEDIA Programme’s logo after 2013.

“The approach of the Commission is that, unless there are specific derogations in the legal base, the new Commission logo will be used as a visual identity for all programmes from the end of this financial perspective,” Silver replied.

She spoke of “a complicated situation”, but stressed that “the name [of MEDIA] will stay for the strand.”

Meanwhile, Kateryna Kopylova, head of the Ukrainian State Film Agency, indicated to Screen Daily during this week’s Odessa International Film Festival that she would actively pursue an application for membership to the pan-European co-production fund Eurimages once Ukrainian film production output has reached 20 films a year.

As the showcase of “works in progress” in the festival’s film industry programme showed, Ukrainian producers are already looking – with success - for foreign partners for their productions. Darya Onyshchenko’s social drama Eastalgia, featuring Karl Markovics, Lea Mornar, Vuk Kostic and Georg Friedrich, is a co-production between Ukraine, Germany and Serbia, while Olena Fetisova and Serge Avedikan’s biopic Paradjanov was produced by Ukraine with partners from France, Georgia and Armenia.

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