Tony Bennett, Differing diversities - Council of Europe

Reasearch position paper 3The history of European Union cultural policy provides an important case study ofhow European integration works and how European Union institutions havemanoeuvred to gain jurisdiction over new policy areas. It also highlights the tensionbetween the European Union’s desire to promote greater freedom of trade incultural goods and services within Europe, and those who wish to mobilise cultureas a defensive shield against the perceived dangers of globalisation from without.The first budget lines specifically for culture voted by the European Parliamentduring the 1970s mostly concerned heritage matters and involved relatively smallamounts of money. However, these budgetary inroads enabled the Commission in1973 to create a small unit dedicated to cultural affairs, thus establishing a strategicbridgehead for advancing further claims for competence in cultural affairs. TheCommission then used its initial activity to justify further activities. Through itsvarious communications on Community cultural action, it also set about rewritingthe history of its involvement in culture, portraying this as a response to a widelyfelt need for greater co-ordination. 1 This was done, according to Sandell (1997:269), “by putting forward bureaucratic, quasi-Marxist definitions of culture inorder to shoehorn it into the framework of the Treaty”. “Culture and the arts” thusbecame “the Cultural Sector” and “the Cultural Sector” 2 thus became “the socioeconomicwhole formed by persons and enterprises dedicated to the productionand distribution of cultural goods and services”.In addition to redefining culture to render it more amenable to Community intervention,the Commission exploited these new definitions to involve itself in culturalaction of a more symbolic kind designed to promote “European identity” andbring Europe “closer to its citizens”. 3 Prompted by the low turn-outs in the 1984European Parliament elections, the European Council established an ad hocCommittee for a People’s Europe, whose brief was to suggest measures “tostrengthen and promote the Community’s identity and its image both for its citizensand for the rest of the world” (Adonnino, 1985: 5). The Committee, chairedby Italian MEP, Pietro Adonnino, subsequently produced two reports outliningcultural strategies for promoting the “European idea” – most of which have beenimplemented. These included a Europe-wide “audiovisual area” with a “trulyEuropean” multilingual television channel, a European Academy of Science, and__________1. The Commission’s narrative regarding the evolution of its cultural policy is best exemplified in its1992 Communication: New prospects of Community cultural action. Other major communicationsinclude Community action in the cultural sector (1977); Stronger Community action in the cultural sector(1982); A fresh boost for culture in the European Community (1987); and European Communityaction in support of culture (1994).2. As used by the European Union, this term typically includes information, communication, audiovisual,heritage, sport and the arts. Earlier definitions also included education and “youth”.3. The 1976 Tindemans’ Report on European Union represents the first embryonic statement ofCommunity cultural policy. Significantly, this developed the new catchword of “Citizen’s Europe”,although it was not until Maastricht, sixteen years later, that this idea was translated into the legalconcept of Citizenship of the Union. A second key event was the 1983 Solemn Declaration onEuropean Union signed by the European Council in Stuttgart. This introduced the idea that Europeanco-operation should extend to cultural co-operation, to be pursued not for its own sake but “in order toaffirm the awareness of a common cultural heritage as an element in the European identity” (cited inDe Witte, 1987).111