This declaration also commits the G20 to take full account of the conclusions of the meeting of G20 employment ministers in Paris, which make provisions for setting up a social protection base backed by suitable financing according to levels of development. It also demands the implementation of reforms in the financial sector agreed on at the London G20 meeting in April 2009, as well as the setting up of a tax on financial transactions.

While the crisis continues to dig itself in and draw itself out with increasing intensity, banks are still holding out against the necessary reforms of the financial sector, at the same time as citizens and taxpayers are called on to subsidize private banks.

Throughout the whole of the first half of 2011, the music world echoed to the conflict between musicians of the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra (OSB) and musical director, Roberto Minczuk. The latter wanted to put all OSB musicians through an audition, to determine who would be selected to continue with their work in the orchestra whose profile he wanted to change, suddenly and arbitrarily.

The agreement obtained by the Musicians’ Syndicate of Rio de Janeiro in September 2011 put an end to this dispute, with the result that Mr. Minczuk was dismissed from the orchestra management. The happy end to this drawn-out conflict should not hide the fact that other conductors, for example at the Symphony Orchestra of Guyaquil, Ecuador, are still wanting to bulldoze reforms of their ensembles by submitting musicians to re‑auditioning without any thought to the validity of this process or its effect on people.

FIM, main co-organiser alongside EJI (Hungarian performers’ collecting society) and the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office (HIPO) welcomed numerous speakers, including in particular Mr. Trevor Clarke (Assistant Director General of WIPO), Mr. Kari Tapiola (Special advisor to ILO Director General), Mrs Maria Martin-Prat (Head of the European Commission’s Copyright Unit), Dr Miklós Bendzsel (President of the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office), Dr Mihály Ficsor (President of the Hungarian Council of Copyright Experts) and Mrs Silke Von Lewinski (Head of Department — Max Planck Institute).

As conference opener, Kari Tapiola and John Smith (FIM President) recalled the historical bases which, since the early 20th century up to 1961, gradually led the international community to recognize the full legitimacy of performers to benefit from intellectual property rights.

Today, whereas these rights have acquired equal status with copyright, certain problems, which originally were the reason for their emergence some 100 years ago, are still, to some extent, current issues. The constant evolution of technology continues to threaten jobs in the sector as in the early days of broadcasting or microgroove records.

John Morton, President Emeritus of FIM, received a warm welcome from those attending who recognized his historical contribution to the cause of musicians and related rights. Talking of the role of unions in the recognition of related rights, he reminded participants that, although collective bargaining, on its own, was insufficient to transcend an inadequate legal framework, the most advanced legal rights could only be of benefit to those at whom they were aimed if the latter had sufficient bargaining power.

Speakers on behalf of other organisations represented talked of the heritage of the Rome Convention and WPPT from successively legal, economic and social viewpoints, mentioning alternatively the acute problem of piracy and the need to push forward when it came to performers’ rights, in particular in the audiovisual field (future WIPO treaty on audiovisual performances).

Focusing on the future, several speakers underlined the interest in setting up equitable remuneration linked to the right of making available for performers. The proposed audiovisual treaty for which a diplomatic conference was soon to be convened by WIPO was also welcomed, particularly with regards to its new article 12 which recognizes performers’ legitimate right to fair compensation in return for transferring their rights to producers.

We need to come out strongly against such auditions, which we deem to be unfair in several respects:

- Rather than relying on the identification of an individual deficit followed up by measures aimed at helping the musician in question to remedy such, such auditions put the burden on an artist to prove his/her competence - without such having been at fault and without the musician having been given any forewarning.

- Such auditions do not reflect the usual working environment in which a musician is expected to work, instead subjecting him or her to exceptional stress. This leads to the wrong criteria being used in evaluating him or her, artificially creating a situation where failure is easy and opening the door to arbitrary decisions.

Fifty years after this initial recognition of the right of performers for their performances to enjoy international protection, numerous international experts will come together to discuss its impact on performers' lives and on the whole sector, taking into account the role played by the 1996 WPPT. We will be also attempting to gauge what still needs to be done.

After a week full of ups and downs, consensus was reached on the 19 articles provisionally adopted at the December 2000 conference. A further article (Article 12) was added, explicitly recognising the possibility for states to maintain or introduce a presumption of transfer of rights from performers to producers. This new Article 12 does not in itself create any new rights, being restricted to indicating what remains authorised within the framework of the treaty with regard to presumptions of transfer.

Of crucial importance here - and a result of the negotiations conducted at the WIPO last June - is the wording of this article, which now contains two paragraphs outlining the possibilities open to states
- to provide for the obligatory use of written contracts (§ 2)
- to link any transfer to the payment of a royalty fee/remuneration to the performer (§ 3).

These two paragraphs are very important, having the same incentive value as the first. In this sense, any fears of Article 12 being used as a model to implement the treaty in a form entirely unfavourable to performers are greatly diminished.

Here is the text of Article 12 on which consensus was reached at the 22^nd session of the SCCR:

Independent of the transfer of exclusive rights described above, national laws or individual, collective or other agreements may provide the performer with the right to receive royalties or equitable remuneration for any use of the performance, as provided for under this Treaty including as regards Articles 10 and 11.

FIM has constantly rejected, in all WIPO decision-making bodies, any use of the presumption of transfer which is not accompanied by a provision providing for appropriate remuneration of the artist in the case of such a transfer. The wording used in Article 12 above constitutes an acceptable compromise and can be seen as a major step forward against the original US proposal prematurely supported by FIA.

This development, reflecting the concerns of FIM, is the result of intensive consultations between the US, India and Mexico, in which the organisations representing performers (FIA, FIM, AEPO-ARTIS, FILAIE, AISGE) and producers (FIAPF, MPA) were involved.

The agreement arrived at in extremis within the SCCR also includes a commitment to respond to Brazilian demands with regard to the wording of the Preamble and the inclusion of agreed statements. Similarly, an agreed statement needs to be compiled (at the request of India and Brazil) clarifying the scope of the definition of a performer (and thereby guaranteeing for example that Indian artists performing traditional dances are covered by the treaty without such protection being extended to mere tourists possibly filmed dancing at the Rio Carnival).