2010-07-16

The Four Member State Expert Working Groups - Final Reports

The four Member State expert working groups established in the 2008-2010 Workplan for Culture have published their final reports on:

1. mobility of culture professionals;
2. cultural and creative industries;
3. synergies between culture and education;
4. museum activities,
5. Eurostat ESSnet-culture.

These groups have worked through the "Open Method of Coordination", exchanging good practices, comparing policies and making recommendations for action at national or European level. Their work is feeding into Member State discussion of the next Workplan from 2011.

In order to implement its three strategic objectives (promotion of cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue; promotion of culture as catalyst for creativity in the framework of the Lisbon Strategy; and promotion of culture as a vital element in EU external relations), the European Agenda for culture introduced new cooperation methods with various stakeholders: a structured dialogue with the cultural sector ; a reinforced mainstreaming of culture in all EU programmes and policies through enhanced synergies between the departments of the European Commission, as well as a more structured system of cooperation between the Member States and the EU institutions ('open method of coordination').
Five priority areas, articulated around the three objectives of the Agenda, were set by the Council as suitable for the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) framework. These areas effectively provide the basis for the Council work plan for culture 2008-2010 through which the Agenda for culture becomes operational:

Improving the conditions for the mobility of artists and other professionals in the cultural field;
Promoting access to culture, especially through the promotion of cultural heritage, cultural tourism, multilingualism, digitisation, synergies with education (in particular arts education) and greater mobility of collections;
Developing data, statistics and methodologies in the cultural sector and improving their comparability;
Maximising the potential of cultural and creative industries, in particular that of SMEs;
Promoting and implementing the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.

In order for Member States to move ahead in these priority areas and deliver concrete results by the end of 2010, four experts' working groups have been set up (click here to know more about the principles relating to their setting up and functioning):

Conditions of mobility of artists and other professionals in the cultural field;
Potential of cultural and creative industries;
Mobility of collections and activities of museums;
Synergies between culture and education.

These working groups were launched in 2008 and will formally report in June 2010; They are expected to feed into political reflection at EU level by identifying, sharing and validating best practices, preparing recommendations for specific measures for their implementation, making proposals for cooperation initiatives between Member States or at EC level and for elements of methodology to evaluate progress, as well as formulating policy recommendations.

In addition to these four groups, work on cultural statistics has been re-launched by EUROSTAT.

The reports are available at the following link: http://ec.europa.eu/culture/news/news2742_en.htm

European Commission

Comments (0)

There are no comments for this content yet.