Europe needs to remember how to “tell its own story.”
That was the loud and clear message from an impassioned, almost Churchillian speech by Council of Europe Secretary General Alain Berset this morning, as he gets set to sign a landmark international co-production treaty that its backers believe will signal an “era of new alliances.”
“I cannot help but think looking around this room that Europe has forgotten how to tell its own story,” Berset told a Series Mania audience as he opened the Lille Dialogues day. “What Europe would give in moments like this for a storytelling tool as powerful as yours, reminding people who we are, what we built and why it still matters.”
Berset’s message was loud and clear, European creatives need to be empowered via finance, looser regulation and sheer democratic power of will to keep telling stories about the continent in all of its richness. His speech came a day after a Federation of Screenwriters in Europe report found that creatives are self-censoring amid a sea of European far-right governments and under the shadowy influence of Donald Trump.
“Stories are treated as mere concepts, citizens are reduced to consumers and dialog is reduced to data,” said Berset. “Before you know it, Europe becomes a market of 700 million people rather than a continent that can tell its own story.”
In around an hour, Berset will officially sign the co-pro treaty into force, along with delegates from around a dozen other nations including France, Italy and Poland as he tries to convince nearly 50 European nations to sign. The legal framework will introduce a set of co-pro rules, which are similar to what already exists in the world of film. The aim, in part, is to streamline administrative procedures and clarify obligations to make it easier for producers from different countries to work together. There will be rules and clarification around revenue sharing, access to funding and data transparency.
The treaty has been one of the big talking points at Series Mania this week, which concludes soon after the signing.
Berset said it is so much more than “signing a paper.” “It is an international engagement, a concrete one for supporting what you are doing at international level,” he added. “It is a strategic signal for resilience of European productions, a reminder we are stronger when policymakers, public service media and creators move together.”
In a world rife with conflict and uncertainty, Berset ended with a passionate demand that the world remember “national identity is not nationalism” and “protection is not protectionism.”
“The world outside is not waiting for culture to catch up, it is already here in this room, on our screens, in the stories we tell,” he said. “And it is in the stories we fail to tell each other. It lies in our abiltiy to imagine the future together and that is why democracy really is the greatest story of all.”