A median audio-visual author in Europe earns €18,000 from their work after tax, with an additional €2,000 coming from secondary payments including CMOs.
As the Copyright Directive discussions have entered a crucial phase in the European Parliament and Council, FERA and FSE call on EU policy-makers to take a stand to secure effective measures to ensure European audio-visual authors’ fair and proportionate remuneration. Without it, there can be no sustainable future for European audio-visual creation.
Although the European audio-visual industries’ turnover in 2012 was € 107.3 billion, we know that, at national level, the majority of creators who produce the copyright goods on which the culture industries are built have extremely unstable incomes that are usually very modest. Investing the time, energy and resources necessary to create, has become increasingly difficult.
Preliminary results from the first ever, comprehensive, Europe-wide research aimed at mapping out the economic and social situation of European audio-visual authors paint a sobering picture of the brutal economic reality faced by creators in the European audio-visual sector.
Including all sources of personal income young authors have annual income of less than €15,000. If they can sustain a career, this rises to €30,000 for men and €24,000 for women at the age of fifty, following which it drops again to less than €15,000 at 65. As a result, they usually have other work either within the industry (50% of authors) or outside the industry (34% of directors and 42% of screenwriters).
It is now the industry’s turn to show that it also has a sustainable vision for the future of its creative community.