Claudia Schmied, Federal Minister for Education, the Arts and Culture of the Republic of Austria visited ECSA’s Brussels Office on 10th of May. Welcomed by ECSA Secretary General Patrick Ager, Minister Schmied was guided through the venues of Flagey by Director General Hugo de Greef, as well as informed about the European House for Culture by Kathrin Deventer, EFA Secretary General.
ECSA Spokesperson Patrick Rackow and Secretary General Patrick Ager provided Minister Schmied with a comprehensive information folder on ECSA and welcomed the opportunity to talk informally with the representative of the Austrian government.
The Austrian delegation also included Mr. Hanspeter Huber, Chief of staff of the Ministers’ office and Mrs. Heidemarie Meissnitzer, Counsellor of Embassy of the Austrian permanent mission in Brussels.

From Left to Right: Patrick Rackow, Patrick Ager, Claudia Schmied, Hanspeter Huber

Hosted by John Groves, the Coercion Committee met on 8th of May in Hamburg for a day-long working session. “The meeting was extremely constructive, I didn’t expect such inputs. We have now an ambitious action plan for the coming weeks,” as pointed out by Committee Chairman Örjan Stranberg when concluding.
Among others, the committee discussed in deep the growing business practice that acquiring a composing commission for a film- or TV- production includes signing off a “publishers’ share”, as high as 50%, to be paid back to the TV-station. This routine had been unanimously declared as an extremely immoral practice retrieving fees to authors’ societies on the costs of the creators, thus seriously jeopardizing the living ground of composers.

The next meeting of the Coercion Committee is set for the 10th of June in Bilbao.

Left to right: Loek Dikker, Patrick Ager, Patrick Rackow, Chris Smith, John Groves, Örjan Strandberg and Lorenzo Fererro.