Ramon Colom
Regarding the approval last December 4, by the Council of Ministers, the new Royal Decree implementing the Law 55/2007, of Film, considering the amendments made by Royal Decree-Law 6/2015, FAPAE wants to insist in its assessment of what precipitated the process, whose sole purpose is to enter into force next January, without weighing the significance of the changes involved.
“The approval of this legislation is the culmination of a journey that began with the creation of the call three years ago, of the ‘Joint Commission’ in which all players in the sector and the government were able to discuss at length about the model of our business. We regret, therefore, that changes to the model are closed in haste and especially on date`s as close to the end of the legislature,” expressed Ramon Colom President of FAPAE .
“The reform does not address regulatory change overall, but their modifications arising from minimal reform to the Law of Film, while maintaining in force certain aspects of the Ministerial Decree of 2009. As we propose to the Administration expected that this reform was part of a bolder support system modernization and to better align ourselves with neighboring countries,” he said.
He also said that “it is not possible a valuation of comprehensive assessment of the new regulations, until it is published in the Official Gazette and have occasion to analyze in detail its content, but we verified that have already introduced two amendments to the definition of “hard work”, text that the Administration made available on the occasion of the public inquiry held in the month of August and, in particular, on two aspects: the increase of the budget for works of new directors and the percentage aid intensity for works in co-official languages other than Castilian.”
Regarding the first aspect, the fixed budget is now 300,000 euros (in its original version was 100,000 euros), which FAPAE still considered very low. If the ultimate goal is to promote the incorporation of new directors to the sector, it must be given also the opportunity to participate in top-level content, and especially when the definition of new director (two productions) limits the enjoyment of these different conditions.
About the second, FAPAE appreciates the intensity percentage increases over the first version of the document (from 60% to 65%), but we believe that the central government should have made this consideration to regional governments with different co-official languages other than Castilian in the assurance that they could assess in each case with much better approach the complexity of using them, as a vehicular language of an audiovisual production and grade, therefore, the intensity of aid should be admitted.
FAPAE, Federation of Spanish Audiovisual Producers