EUROPEAN COMMISSION SUPPORTS TAX INCENTIVES
In November this year, CEO Mark Woods accompanied officials from the Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism to a European Council meeting in Taormina, Italy, on reform of various European mechanisms to support the audio-visual industry.Delegates broke into various working groups to form recommendations for the Council of Europe. Woods participated in the Tax Incentive workshop which concluded that "European Institutions adopt a positive stance toward tax incentives .... and play a positive role in stimulating setting up of national schemes that promote European co-productions." The session recommended that member states that do not already have incentives should consider introducing them and noted the incentives were a perfect mechanism to augment a scarcity of direct subsidy funding.
The conference also discussed the future of the MEDIA program and noted the challenge of 10 new member countries coming on line next year. The new program should also improve the competitiveness of the European audio-visual industry, facilitate the distribution of European works within and outside the EU and accelerate the take up of digital technologies, the conference concluded.