News from Cullen International's COVID-19 Update no. 2 (25 June 2020)

This table provides an overview of measures taken by national governments, NRAs, and film agencies to mitigate the economic impact of the lock-down on the cinema and audiovisual industry. Measures include for instance:

• the grant of additional funds and the suspension or waiver of certain requirements to help productions that have already received support but face delays or could not be distributed, or to incentivise new productions;
• incentives for advertising investments on audiovisual media services;
• support for cinemas.

This table does not cover measures that are not specific to the audiovisual sector, such as support for loans given to enterprises and measures to support workers of all business sectors.

Background

The European Parliament has called on the EU and member states to provide support to the cultural and creative sectors “as they play an important role for our economy and our social life and are severely affected by the current crisis”.

Cullen International has just published a report covering measures taken by governments, NRAs, and film agencies in 13 member states to mitigate the economic impact of the lockdown on the cinema and audiovisual industry.

All the countries are taking measures to further support the production and distribution of audiovisual and cinema works, which is currently on hold in most countries. Depending on the country, the measures aim to help projects that have already received support but face delays or could not be completed (e.g. by unlocking payment of approved grants), to incentivise new projects by increasing support and/or facilitating access to existing funds, or to provide support for production crews.

Other measures seek to help providers of audiovisual media services. Examples include:

• incentives to advertise on audiovisual media services (Italy);
• new or increased funds to support public service broadcasters (Netherlands and Spain), local broadcasters (Denmark) and public interest programming (Croatia);
• suspension (Italy) or waiver (Denmark and Ireland) of certain requirements for smaller audiovisual media services.

Interestingly, in Poland, the government has proposed to increase funding for cinema production by extending the 1.5% levy (currently imposed to broadcasters and distributors) to revenues of VOD providers.

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