15/09/2014 - The European Commission’s DG for Communications Networks, Content and Technology will be headed by Günther Oettinger, who was previously responsible for the energy strategy in Europe

Günther Oettinger

Creative Europe, the European Commission's framework programme for support to the culture and media sectors, will be managed in the future by the Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG Connect). The DG will be headed up for the next five years by German CDU politician Günther Oettinger, who was previously the European Energy Commissioner in Brussels. His new tasks include increasing digital interconnection in Europe, and he also has to deal with the new reform of the copyright law, which needs to be redefined in the digital age; a public consultation has already taken place on this matter.

However, according to a report in the German newspaper Handelsblatt, the new position was not Oettinger's first choice: the EU Commissioner was hoping to become the European Commissioner for Trade. For German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Oettinger had been the perfect candidate for the trade department because in that position he would have been in charge of the negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

Meanwhile, the Creative Europe Culture programme will remain in the Directorate General for Education and Culture (DG EAC), which will be headed by Tibor Navracsics, Minister of Foreign Affairs and for Trade in Hungary. “The future of the Creative Europe programme and its targets will persist, of course,” underlines Karel Bartak, Creative Europe Coordinator at the EU, and Barbara Gessler, Head of Unit Creative Europe at the EACEA. “The decision that Creative Europe will become part of the digital agenda has the potential to stimulate the innovative dimension of the programme.”