The Advisory Committee of the European Audiovisual Observatory has a new Chair. Pauline Durand-Vialle, CEO of the Federation of European Film Directors (FERA) since February 2014, has been elected to head up the Observatory’s Advisory Committee. She  takes over from Elena Lai, former Secretary General of the European Coordination of Independent TV Producers (CEPI), who held the position from for two years from 2019 – 2020.
The European Audiovisual Observatory provides facts, figures and analyses about the audiovisual industries in Europe. Its work covers film, television and VoD from an economic and legal point of view. The Observatory’s Advisory Committee brings together 39 different industry representative groups with members such as the EBU, ACT, the SAA and CINE-REGIO, for example. It meets in Strasbourg each spring to give the Observatory grass roots feedback on the kind of information and analysis media professionals in Europe really need for their work. Advisory Committee members also support Observatory’s projects by sharing expertise and data. Since the start of lockdown in Europe, the Observatory’s Advisory Committee has held several online meetings to continue its input into the organisation’s activities and work plan.  
Pauline Durand-Vialle paid tribute to Elena Lai and said that she was looking forward to “helping to advise the Observatory in providing much needed data and analysis, particularly in the current climate of the pandemic and its potentially devastating effects on our industry’s creatively and culturally diverse ecosystem”.
The Observatory’s Executive Director, Susanne Nikoltchev, praised Elena Lai’s “professionalism, energy and positive attitude” during her two years as Advisory Committee Chair. She looked forward to working with Pauline Durand-Vialle who is the second* female Chair to carry through the assignment since the Observatory was created in 1992. 

* 11/12/2020 - Erratum
Pauline Durand-Vialle is in fact the third female chair of the Advisory Committee.
The first female chair was former FIAPF Director General, Valérie Lépine-Karnik. The second is Elena Lai, former Secretary General of CEPI.