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

Regional integration and CARIFORUM-wide institutions have not performed satisfactorily. The national legal frameworks with regard to cultural policies, intellectual property protection and digitization, have somewhat been adapted but certainly not enough. There is limited private sector knowledge on how to leverage EPA opportunities, such as investment and joint venture opportunities, and there is no private sector access to financing mechanisms for exporting. The lack of regional and national industry associations topromote advocacy and support human and institutional capacity development for the creative sector has also had a negative effect. Start-up financing and business facilitation for clustering and incubation/accelerator programmes for the creative industries remains weak. Fortunately, most of these implementation gaps and challenges have caught the attention of CARIFORUM-EU institutions. There has been a broad acknowledgement of the unfortunate status quo on the implementation of cultural

provisions in particular and the need to take action and allocate funding 51 . Furthermore, at the fourth joint CARIFORUM-EU Council meeting (17 November 2017), the EU agreed to look at measures to facilitate the entry of foreigners supplying services and the identification of applicable legislation in a particular Member State in order to provide further legal certainty to other categories of service providers, including CSS and independent professionals. A joint meeting on cultural cooperation held on 28 July 2017, ahead of the 7th CARIFORUM-EU Trade and Development Committee, also called for revised modalities in the effective implementation

There has been a broad

acknowledgement of the unfortunate status quo on the implementation of cultural provisions in particular and the need to take action and allocate funding

of the PCC. It highlighted persistent visa requirement challenges (and the applicability of the EU’s Schengen Visa Regime for facilitating temporary entry under the EPA) and difficulties in accessing financing for priority sectors like audiovisual, performing arts and publishing sectors. The third consultative committee meeting (6-7 November 2017, Trinidad and Tobago) also highlighted key issues related to trade in services,

70 Culture in the CARIFORUM-EU EPA

51. See http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-3651-2018-INIT/en/pdf