Interview With Brazilian Culture Minister Marcelo Calero

At last week’s first-ever Assembly of the Marrakesh Treaty, Intellectual Property Watch caught up with the Assembly Chair, new Brazilian Culture Minister Marcelo Calero. In a video interview with William New, he talked briefly about the importance of libraries and of implementing the Marrakesh Treaty.

[Note: the WIPO Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled entered into effect on 30 September 2016.]

The video interview is available here.

Intellectual Property Watch (IPW): Thank you Minister, in light of this great accomplishment of the Marrakesh Treaty – and congratulations on your appointment as chair of the Marrakesh Assembly – we would like to ask you about the issue of libraries more broadly and some of the concerns in that area.

Minister Marco Calero (Calero): Yes, we have a very successful experience in Brazil, in Rio more particularly, where I was the Secretary of Culture, before becoming the Minister of Culture of the country. We call it Libraries of Tomorrow, in Portuguese “Bibliotecas de Amanhã.” These libraries of tomorrow, they are like buildings in which of course you have all the accessibility needed, but not only in terms of the building itself, but also in terms of equipment and that’s the most important thing. I think that connects very much with the Marrakesh Treaty. We are working pretty hard on that, putting money on that project. Next year, we are launching more than 300 books, accessible to all in this context, and I think that Brazil has a very important role because we are the leading country in the Portuguese language world so we do have to cooperate with our partners in Africa and in Europe in that sense.

IPW: I would just follow with a question about the multilateral level. We are here at the UN agency on IP and we would be interested in your views of goals and objectives for the international, multilateral level, some of the issues that you might see coming, some of the possibly digital issues if you wish to speak on these.

Calero: Well, Brazil has a very strong traditional multilateralism. I think that’s part of our diplomatic history. And of course we count very much on the discussions that we may have between the countries. I think that the main goal that we have now is to have more members signing and joining the Marrakesh Treaty and I do believe that the Brazilian diplomatic network will work pretty hard on that.

IPW: Thank you very much.