Tony Bennett, Differing diversities - Council of Europe

Reasearch position paper 3integration studies with the aim of “Europeanising” university teaching. TheCommission also attempted to reconfigure the ritual calendar by creating new festive“European Weeks”, “European Cultural Months” (to accompany the“European City of Culture” initiative), and a series of “European years” dedicatedto the promotion of certain European Union-chosen themes (such as the“European Year of Cinema”, or the “European Year of the Environment”). It alsoproposed that 9 May (the date of the Schuman Declaration) be designated official“Europe Day” and a public holiday. Behind these seemingly mundane cultural initiativeslay a more profound objective: to transform the symbolic ordering of time,space, and education in order to reflect the “European dimension” and instilgreater consciousness of Europe within the public imagination.European Union cultural policies since Maastricht: “unity indiversity”?By 1992, official European Union cultural action (those areas covered by DG X)still only amounted to a random collection of low-key projects based on Councilresolutions for which the Commission could find small amounts of money underits own authority. These included audiovisual programmes, book projects, networkingof cultural organisations, harmonisation of controls on the export of culturalgoods, restoration projects on symbolic sites of archaeological heritage, andvarious small schemes to sponsor cultural exchanges, training, business sponsorshipof the arts, the translation of important works of European culture, and theadmission of young people to museums and cultural events. By contrast, unofficial(or indirect) cultural action now involved the activities and spending of sevenother Directorates-General – and an estimated budget of ECU 2.47 billion in theperiod 1989-93, an average of ECU 494 million per annum. 1This situation changed with the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. Among its innovations,Maastricht created the European Union and introduced “European Citizenship” asa legal category – another idea advocated by Adonnino. It also brought severalnew areas within the Community’s jurisdiction, including education, youth, consumerprotection, public health and culture, thereby substantially enlarging theEuropean Union’s sphere of governance. By placing culture de jure as a treatymatter, it also legitimised the European Union’s past and ongoing cultural activitiesand interests. Although culture occupies relatively few words of theMaastricht Treaty, giving culture its own section was of more than symbolic significance.The key provisions are set out in Article 128: 21. The Community shall contribute to the flowering of the cultures of the MemberStates, while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the sametime bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore.__________1. Bates and Wacker, Community support for culture: a study carried out for the Commission of theEC (DG X), 3 June 1993, cited in Sandell, 1997: 272.2. Under the revised Treaty of Amsterdam, this became Article 151, and Title IX (“Culture”) becameTitle XII. However, the wording of the modified article remains largely unchanged.113