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coincidence that from 1995 onwards
discrete negotiations were held by
the OECD, resulting in what is often
referred to by its French acronym,
AMI (Accord multilatéral sur l'investissement)
– soon unmasked as a
'false friend' when public debate on
the proposed regulations became
possible. With hindsight, it is hard to
fully deny the conspiratorial nature of
these negotiations.
What had happened? The OECD's
AMI project – or MAI (Multilateral
Agreement on Investment) in English
– proposed to give international investors
equal rights across all of its
Member States. This would prevent
'discrimination' by national governments
in the form of preferential
treatment - with no differentiation
between sectors, and without the
right enshrined in the GATS allowing
states the discretion to propose or
not such options (cf. Serge Regourd:
L'exception culturelle, Paris 2002).
This urgently raises the question of
transparency and the need for democratic
debate of such wide-ranging
decisions; an issue that has recently
attracted renewed attention in the
wake of the referenda on the draft
EU Constitution. When the OECD
negotiations became known, the reaction
of professional organisations
in France was so intense that the
Jospin government sounded a retreat
in October 1998, leading to the
end of the OECD project in December
1998. (Since then the OECD has
managed, thanks to its comparative
evaluation of education systems, to
regain the kind of goodwill that is intuitively
accorded to any good educational
reform, however questionable
the methodological approach behind
it may be).
It is at this point, at the very latest,
that we come up against a problem
that has proved to be fundamental:
the problem of political coherence.
Paragraph 151.4 of the European
Community Treaty does, in fact, contain
a 'Cultural Compatibility' clause,
which is a general commitment on
the part of the EC to take account of
cultural issues in all of its activities.
However, it has become commonplace
to cast doubt on the effectiveness
of this commitment. It may be
justified that trade and security considerations
tend to take priority;
nevertheless, it seems less than justifiable
that, at the WTO, decisions
of fundamental importance are taken
as to which instruments of cultural
policy are to be deemed 'superfluous'
in the context of continuing
deregulation. Political action is determined
by the need to foresee its
consequences as accurately and as
completely as is possible; therefore,
the participation of the competent
cultural politicians in both parliament
and government is to be called on
whenever cultural policy is at stake.
Intangible Cultural Heritage: Sanskrit theatre from the province of Kerala, the Kutiyattam. The oldest living theatrical tradition in India
Photo: UNESCO
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