The Director General of the High Authority for Audiovisual Communication, Mr. Jamal Eddine Naji, member of the European Audiovisual Observatory Bureau, took part, Thursday October 4^th, of the bi-annual meeting of this executive institution that happens twice a year in Paris to prepare the sessions of the executive committee, reuniting 41 permanent members of the OEA including Morocco ( and the European commission). This meeting was chaired by France by Ms. Elizabeth Le HOT, Deputy Director at the Ministry of Culture, together with Ms. Susanne Niklotchev, Director General of the OEA. Furthermore, France will hand the presidency of the executive committee and the bureau to Morocco in 2019.

During this last bureau audience of the year 2018, the Director General of OEA and her collaborators presented the activities and investments’ reports, the previsions for 2019, in addition to the researches and studies made in favor of the member states.

The members present, France, Morocco, The united kingdom, Italy, and the European commission, approved the financial and budget reports, the 2019 strategy, as well as certain activities regarding the Observatory influence and sensibilizations, especially ones directed to the European Parliaments and the Council of Europe, the administrative supervisor of the OEA. All these documents must be submitted to the Executive Committee, which also acts as a general assembly, in order to act them, have a debate then vote during the coming weeks at the Observatory headquarters in Strasbourg.

Members of the bureau took time to reflect on presenting a potential proposal to the executive committee, next November, concerning the creation of the associate member status, lacking any vote right, considering membership requests coming from countries outside the European Union, particularly Canada that expressed its desire to join the institution several times being an institution of research and surveillance with politically independent objectives and strategies, as the Director General confirms. Nevertheless, membership under the associate member status must be framed by certain criteria defined by the Executive committee.  The criteria would be related to the media environment of the candidate country: the availability, regular and free access, and transparency of the data on the film and audiovisual landscape, a legislative,  reglementary and regulatory framework that encourages freedom of expression, editorial independence, and copyright assurance, at least one regulatory body open to co-regulation and self-regulation, etc.

This member associate status, that is viable to the OEA broadening, will only address the new potential candidates, and would be one of the subjects to discuss and determine in 2019 under the presidency of Morocco, a permanent member state since January 2014.