Frédéric Mitterrand, Minister of Culture and Communication, sets up the working group responsible for reflection on the development conditions of Agence France-Presse (AFP)

The five members of the working group, Henri Pigeat, Michèle Cotta, Fabrice Boé, Jean-Marie Colombani and Francis Teitgen, will be responsible for diagnosing the current situation of AFP, the economic context in which it operates and its positioning in an increasingly difficult competitive environment. It will put in perspective the Agency’s development plan and its financing linked to its contract of objectives and means 2009-20092013; and will identify the principles of governance guaranteeing both AFP’s editorial independence and the means of its economic development. He will thus be able to enlighten the government on the conditions under which AFP will have to evolve its structure and legal status.
The mission of the five experts is a continuation of a process initiated in spring 2009, with the delivery by the President and CEO of AFP of a report to the government on the modernization of the Agency. The Minister of Culture and Communication considers it essential and urgent to enrich this reflection in the light of the double crisis of 2009: global economic crisis, and crisis of the press financing model weakened by the switch from commercial revenues to
new media.
In this perspective, Frédéric Mitterrand recalled that the modernization of the AFP statute should not be a “taboo” and that this evolution could be conceived only in respect of pluralism, editorial independence, and the preservation of its missions of general interest.