The cinema sector will not do well if it is swept away on the negotiation table in the current commercial control between Brussels and Washington, a key representative of the EU’s film industry told Euronews.
“We do not want to be part of the overall negotiations on the prices between Europeans and the Americans,” said Juliette Prissard, general delegate of Eurocinema, who represents film producers in Brussels, Euronews, adding: “There is always the risk that culture will take second place to EU as that of digital.” According to Prissard, EU audiovisual legislation could have less value in the eyes of the European Commission than other EU rules, which has raised fears that the executive sacrifices them to find an agreement with the United States to end the trade war.
In a post Sunday evening on his social platform Truth, Trump said He authorized the Ministry of Commerce and the Office of the US Trade Representative to slap a price 100% “on all the films that enter our country which are produced in foreign land”.
“The film industry in America dies of a very rapid death,” he said, complaining that other countries “offer all kinds of incentives to keep” filmmakers and studios from the United States. “This is a concerted effort of other nations and, therefore, a national security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!”
It was not immediately clear how such a price on international productions could be implemented. It is common that large and smaller films include production in the United States and other countries. Big budget films like the next “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning”, for example, are shot in the world.
The European Commission refused to comment on the declaration on Monday, only claiming that it would expect concrete measures before reacting.
“If Europeans can no longer make films outside the United States, it becomes absurd,” said André Buytaers, president of Pro Spere, the Belgian federation of audiovisual and cinematographic and interpreters, told Euronews, adding that “in any case, there are very few European films in traffic in the United States, therefore the impact on Europeans will not be huge.
Projections of European films in the United States have decreased in recent years, from around 33 million ticket sales in 2017 to 4.8 million in 2023, according to a European Audiovisual Observatory report from November 2024, between 36 European countries (including EU member states and certain EU countries).
The motion Picture Association (MPA), which represents the American American film, television and streaming industries, wrote to the American administration on March 11, marking EU legislation imposing quotas requiring video at the request of services operating in the EU reserve 30% of their catalog for European work. They have also complained of obligations to invest in European work manufactured by EU member states.
EU’s audiovisual legislation was also highlighted as an obstacle to trade with the EU by a report by an American commercial representative published on April 2.
The EU, which already faces 25% prices on its aluminum and steel, 25% on its cars and 10% on all its imports, negotiates with the American administration on a trade agreement to end the war launched by the Trump administration. But the content of the negotiation remains uncertain, and the audiovisual production quotas would not be part of the discussion, an EU official in Euronews told.
Trump's threats came in time to dominate the conversation at the Cannes Film Festival, which opens on May 13.
