Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-04-19-Speech-1-188"
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"en.20100419.21.1-188"2
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"Mr President, honourable Members, and, of course, especially Mrs Trüpel, we are absolutely fascinated by your report. We welcome it. I think that indeed ‘Europeana – the next steps’ is just a start of a very challenging adventure and it shows, by the way, the strong political support for the further development of Europeana as a common access point to Europe’s rich and diverse cultural heritage in the digital age.
An enhanced version of Europeana will be launched later this year, and is expected to give, by then, access to more than 10 million digitised objects. The site will be further developed in the years thereafter. Parliament rightly points out that for the success of Europeana, it is a must to increase the awareness of the site both among cultural institutions, who could contribute their digitised content, and among the general public. Special attention should be given to younger people, rightly mentioned by you, an extremely important part of our population, who could be targeted through the schools.
The Commission is fully committed to continuing work on the development of Europeana and the policies related to it and that will be a key area of work in the European Digital Agenda. It is anyhow worthwhile to fight for it.
So I would like to thank Mrs Trüpel, the rapporteur, for the work she has done and also give her my compliments for the branding, since the branding itself is already unique: ‘Europeana’ – you do not need to explain what it is all about.
The Commission can also support the alternative motion for a resolution, which has the agreement of the main political groups in Parliament, I have been informed.
It is an ambitious project and again, I repeat, it is the start. It aims to make digitised books, newspapers, maps, museum objects, audiovisual material and sound archives from across Europe available on the Internet. That is essential to ensure access to culture in the digital age. It is not only what Mr Migalski said: something that makes us better citizens. Well, let us wait and find out, but, anyhow, it gives an opportunity to be more happy, for enjoying culture is, in most cases, enjoying happiness, so to speak.
It is Parliament’s report that rightly underlines that there is also an economic component. The digitisation and the online accessibility of our cultural heritage will benefit different sectors of activity: think of education, research, tourism and the media.
The Europeana site is the result of an unprecedented collaboration between European libraries, archives and museums. At present, as was rightly mentioned by Mrs Trüpel, it gives direct access to 7 million digitised objects. Again, this is just a start and let us go for it. More can be done and more needs to be done. The Parliament report highlights different areas for Europeana and for the related policies where progress must be made in the coming years.
The development of the site depends, in the first place, on the input from Member States who should do more to digitise their cultural heritage and to make all digitised objects available through Europeana. I am glad that Parliament joins the Commission in asking Member States to make fast progress in doing so. The sooner the better.
Parliament underlines that Europeana should not just give access to public domain works, but should also include material that is still in copyright. Indeed, there is an urgent need – and that is my answer to Mrs Ţicău – to find workable solutions for bringing out-of-print works online, for dealing with the issue of orphan works (works for which it is impossible to locate the rights holders). Failing to do so bears the risk that Europe will lag behind within a few years from now, in particular, compared to the US.
At present, the Commission is carrying out an impact assessment on a possible legal solution for orphan works at European level and we are discussing what could be done, but if you do not mind, I will come back to that when we talk of the digital agenda, for that is one of the issues that we have to touch upon."@en1
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