European filmmakers have witnessed a troubling shift in how their work is perceived and regulated within the European Union. European cinema now faces increasing pressure to conform to market-driven priorities. In response, European filmmakers have united to issue a manifesto—a passionate call to defend the cultural identity of European cinema and ensure it remains a space for artistic freedom, diversity, and heritage.

We, European filmmakers, who have the honor, the passion, the joy, and the responsibility to express in each of our movies our specific European realities, our identities, our cultures in all their diversity, through our images and our languages, which contribute to our richness, to our shared history, both past and present, we, filmmakers from all European countries, call for a "Europe of Culture"!

But today we are deeply worried: The film and audiovisual sectors are under threat.

Cinema — a European invention, born from the genius of the Lumière brothers — swiftly earned its place as a noble form of creation. We named it Art, the Seventh Art. It grew alongside its elder siblings — literature, theatre, painting, photography, music and dance — all of which nurtured and shaped it. Although the youngest, it quickly won the hearts of the public and became a major art form.

In Europe, we decided that it would, just like its elder siblings, carry a cultural mission, an integral part of our rich heritage. To support this cultural player, we built an industry. A very strong industry. It is in this only way that we consider cinema and audiovisual as arts and industries. 

European moviemaking has fully maintained its strength throughout the decades because, faced to the Hollywood's billions and its "universal" English language, we have offered, with much less money, an incredible diversity of points of view, a wonderful and fertile freedom of expression, and a cultural DNA. These assets are the envy of even our filmmaker friends across the ocean. 

Today, in a context of economic war with the United States - Trump personally requested the cancellation of European rules in order to strengthen American digital players - the European Commission wants to erase the cultural character of cinema, placing it solely on an industrial scale. By increasingly considering it as a "industry player like any other", subject only to the market laws, this would immediately benefit American productions and would be catastrophic for our profession and for the diversity of films that we could offer to the public in Europe and throughout the world. Already, the Commission no longer calls us "cinema", nor "cultural player", nor even the recent "cultural industry", but "creative industry". The word "cultural" has vanished. Why? Because cinema and audiovisual, transferred from the Commissioner for Culture to the Commissioner for Digital Affairs and the Internal Market, would soon tend to no longer be protected by specific European cultural legislation, but solely by the market laws. 

We demand that cinema and audiovisual remain protected by laws that recognize them as cultural domains, including the Cultural Exception. In Europe, from the Lumière brothers to the present day, each film is a prototype, a unique proposition that does not necessarily respond to a market demand. This has never prevented some very successful commercial ventures. 

This is how we view the 7th Art. These principles have made us highly competitive: the second largest cinema in the world and the leading cinema as co-producers of the best filmmakers from other continents. Let’s not be naïve: the economic war waged by the USA is also a cultural war! 

We, European filmmakers, declare that we are mobilized, vigilant, and ready to unwaveringly defend the cultural specificity of cinema and audiovisual productions. 

In the current context, we refuse to allow cinema and audiovisual productions to become a European regulatory jurisdiction that risks serving as a bargaining chip with the United States. 

European culture is non-negotiable! 

The role of the European Union is to defend our values, our identities, our wealth, our languages, our freedom of thought, and our expressions through our art. And so, to respect the beautiful diversity of our 450 million citizens. We will take care of it!