The aims of European Cinema and Television Year are: - to promote awareness, notably in political circles and amongst cinema/television professionals and opinion leaders, of the importance of a strong audiovisual industry capable of competing with the large-scale industries to be found outside the Community in this field; - to ensure that the European identity is reflected in the audiovisual media and encourage creativity via an effort to improve the balance between the larger and smaller cultural areas of Europe; - to promote progress in this field within the Community and foster the creation of conditions propitious to the developmen ...[+++]t of the European audiovisual industry; - to achieve improved cooperation in Europe as regards the financing, production and distribution of audiovisual programes and strengthen the links between cinema and television (1) The Committee comprises representatives of the Commission, the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, the European Broadcasting Union and the main film associations, plus the Chairmen of the National Committees.

The Hanover European Council agreed that "it is urgently important for the Community that European production of audiovisual programmes reflecting the richness and diversity of European culture should attain a level more in line with broadcasting capacity in Europe..". and that "urgent consideration should be given to the possibility of creating a EUREKA project in the audiovisual sphere".

The solution: European cooperation structures To stop the dissipation of effort and create a genuine European audiovisual area, the Commission is proposing cooperation at every stage of the creation-financing-production-distribution chain.