France : National Rally and the cultural sector, an inescapable dialogue
In France, the creative sector has always been reluctant to talk, and a fortiori to ask anything, of the elected representatives of the Rassemblement national. But the considerable increase in the number of elected representatives of Marine Le Pen’s party at both national and European level is prompting new questions and reflections on the part of the cultural world.
The reluctance of the creative sector and its representatives to enter into dialogue with elected representatives of the Rassemblement National is strong, and will continue to be there for a long time to come. It has to be said that the RN’s presentation of proposals such as the privatization of public broadcasting corporations, or the exemption from copyright for towns with fewer than 2,000 inhabitants, is not likely to reassure a milieu in which the slightest change in the balance has considerable ripple effects.
Public broadcasting
Privatizing public broadcasting would create an imbalance in the advertising market between existing private channels and newly privatized public broadcasters. The result would be a reduction in the sector’s overall resources – 4 billion euros less in state funding per year – and a change in program purchase orders. This would have repercussions on whole swathes of French creation, such as documentaries and fiction, but also on the music sector. Similarly, in a country where almost half of all tickets sold are for ultra-local events, the end of copyright in small communes would be a tragedy for music authors whose only means of subsistence is this, since they have, it should be remembered, no salary.
Intermittents
The creative sector’s fears of the RN’s ideas are so strong that, on certain themes, rumors persist even though party leaders have denied them. For example,…
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