EUROPEAN CONVENTION: MUSIC AND FILM INDUSTRIES VOICE CONCERN.

European music and film industry professionals have written to the President of the Convention on the Future of Europe, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, to underline the place they believe culture should be given in the future EU Treaty. In a letter dated April 22, EFCA, the European Film Companies Alliance, whose members include film producers, distributors and independent cinema managers, and IMPALA, which represents more than 1,700 enterprises in the independent music publishing, production and distribution sectors, express their "concern regarding the direction taken by the Convention over recent months". The two associations fear the removal of Article 151.4, the only element in the current Treaty permitting account to be taken of the fact that in the Community system, culture is now essentially addressed through other EU policies than cultural and audiovisual policies per se, and that "consideration of cultural specificity cannot result solely from the...