Impact Study: UNESCO-Aschberg Programme for Artists and Cultural Professionals

Here, and again on the basis of asymmetrical liberalization, the EU opened 94% of its services sectors. In many areas, the concessions go beyond what the EU has agreed upon under theWTO umbrella in the framework of the General Agreement for Trade in Services (GATS). The EPA provides improved market access for Caribbean firms and professionals in terms of cross- border trade, investment, consumption abroad and temporary movement of persons in business services, communications, construction, distribution, environmental, financial, transport, tourism and cultural and entertainment services. Beyond these extensive concessions in the trade of services, the EPA contains one novelty with a potentially significant impact: the specific inclusion of the cultural sector in the trade agreement. The impetus for the EPA’s new feature is directly linked to the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (hereafter “2005 Convention”), which was adopted in 2005 and ratified by the EU, as a regional organization, in 2006.

Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions Article 16 – Preferential treatment for developing countries Developed countries shall facilitate cultural exchanges with developing countries by granting, through the appropriate institutional and legal frameworks, preferential treatment to artists and other cultural professionals and practitioners, as well as cultural goods and services from developing countries.

Article 16 in the body of the 2005 Convention is particularly noteworthy, as it formulates a binding obligation for developed countries to “facilitate cultural exchanges with developing countries by granting, through the appropriate institutional and legal frameworks, preferential treatment to artists and other cultural professionals and practitioners, as well as cultural goods and services fromdeveloping countries.” This new call for linking trade and culture and for rebalancing cultural exchanges triggered a major shift in the global trade discourse 9 .

9. Keith Nurse, ‘The Economic Partnership Agreement and the Creative Sector: Implications and Prospects for Cariforum’ in The Cariforum-EU Economic Partnership Agreement: A Practitioners’ Analysis , A. Beviglia Zampetti and J. Lodge (eds), Kluwer International, London, 2011, pp.149-163.

12 Culture in the CARIFORUM-EU EPA