The audiovisual sector lies at the intersection of numerous European policies (culture, information society, telecommunications, trade, intellectual property, etc.), which makes it a highly disparate industry. Moreover, national governments remain firmly attached to their sovereignty over audiovisual policy. The EU’s role is therefore to lay down rules and guidelines in areas of common interest.

Participants and challenges

Social dialogue in the audiovisual sector is of fairly recent date and brings together a number of federations on both the workers’ and employers’ sides (musicians, actors, film producers, radio stations, etc.). Having begun with the topic of vocational training, the dialogue then moved on to stress that the diversity of the audiovisual industry’s sectors and sub-sectors must be taken into account in legal definitions of employment and self-employment. Often, in fact, work in the audiovisual sector is atypical employment.

Outcomes

The considerable fragmentation of this sector could be an obstacle to the adoption of joint texts on issues not directly affecting all participants. Be that as it may, social dialogue in this sector – which has experienced so many upheavals over the past twenty years – does seem to be reaching cruising speed at the end of the first decade of the 2000s.

Joint texts

The “audiovisual” sectoral social dialogue has resulted, since 2004, in the adoption of 3 joint texts.

ETUI and Observatoire Social Européen (2010) European Sectoral Social Dialogue Factsheets. Project coordinated by Christophe Degryse, online publication available at www.worker-participation.eu/EU-Social-Dialogue/Sectoral-ESD

EU Sozialdialog

Audiovisual

Sectoral Social Dialogue Committee (SSDC)

General overview

Participants and challenges

Outcomes

Joint texts