Why we need European cultural policies: the impact of EU ...

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Measures directly referring to culture make up only a small portion of the acquis communautaire.Therefore, any assessment of the impact of EU enlargement on culture means exploring theeffects that EU regulations – for example, for the harmonization of fiscal, social or tax policies,competition policies, free circulation of goods, people and services, and so on – may have hadon cultural policies. Despite the principle of subsidiarity or numerous, èxceptions of culture fromgeneral rules’, the space for intervention by national governments in the cultural field has beennarrowing. Traditional divisions between different policy areas are changing and it is sometimesdifficult for national governments to determine what is internal and what constitutes foreign policy.It is also very important to acknowledge the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice. Thatcourt has occasionally has been called upon to interpret ambiguous rules affecting culture. Thesehave not only included cases about state aid in the audio-visual sector, particularly affecting publicservice broadcasters (Pauwels 2003), but also cases about interpretation of the fixed book pricerules or social security regulations, which can be important for the mobility of artists. As Europeanlaw has been growing and becoming more complex, it is logical to expect that there will be morecultural disputes requiring judgment in this court.Ambiguous attitudesIn spite of these developments, the position of the EU towards cultural policies can stillbe described as the protection of the status quo and a rather defensive approach to policymaking.As there is no articulated common cultural policy, culture has found itself in a ratherambiguous position.On one hand, there has been continuous lobbying from cultural activists and policy-makers torecognize the special role and the importance of culture and to give culture a more prominentplace; on the other hand, EU member states have been unable to achieve a consensus on howto make policies about culture at the EU level. Culture has been generally evoked only when itneeds to be èxempt’ from certain regulations, but it is not likely that culture will achieve a moreprominent place in the EU agenda unless it is included in mainstream policy-making at EU level.This ambiguous position of culture is even more evident in the new EU member states andcandidate countries.7 Because, with a few exceptions cultural matters are not an explicit partof the EU agenda, and because defining policy priorities in the new member countries has beenprofoundly influenced by those priorities set already by Brussels, culture is lagging behind othersectors. These factors tend to mean that national governments’ cultural policy-making, where and12Introduction
when it does occur in the EU, not only lacks innovation, but also that it tends to be a fairly lowpriority. At the same time, in these countries it has often been difficult to determine if reforms area consequence of what is colloquially labelled as impact of globalization, European integration,the transition from one system to another, or simply as a natural transformation of public policiesthat comes with development, often inspired by policy solutions in other countries or otherpolicy areas.8One result of the way culture is dealt with within the EU is that there is still very little researchon the impact of EU enlargement on culture in transition countries other than in those aspectsexplicitly covered by the acquis communautaire, such as audio-visual policy 9 or copyright.It is therefore difficult for governments to monitor the potential consequences of enlargement oncultural policies and eventually decide what laws they should adopt to counteract some potentiallynegative effects and to adapt cultural policies to changing realities.Background to this researchThis is why the primary goal of this study is to identify those elements of cultural policies thatmight be directly or indirectly affected by the EU enlargement. From the information gathered sofar, one can identify at least three reasons for the lack of interest and research about this topic.First, in Europe (in new and old EU member states as well as potential future members), there arecontinuing debates concerning the EU and culture, primarily about whether or not it is necessaryto move towards the adoption of shared cultural policies. This has shifted the focus of debatefrom the possible impact of EU policies on culture to the validity of even having a Europeancultural policy. In line with one of the basic principles of researching public policies – that publicpolicy comprises not only a government’s action but also its inaction in a specific field(Dye 1976; Parsons 1999; Heidenheimer et al 1990) – this research has looked at numerouslaws and regulations which directly or indirectly affect culture, and has tried to show how,implicitly, a European cultural policy already exists. For culture, it would simply be much betterif this policy were more explicitly articulated (as is stated frequently in the report known as theRuffolo Report [Ruffolo, 2001] see page 30 and 35).Another reason for the lack of research has been the absence of basic comparable informationand statistics on the European level – a problem already identified, analyzed and explainedduring the process of the assessment of the Council of Europe’s project on National reports oncultural policy, (Gordon, in Gordon and Mundy, 2001). This research has shown that many of theIntroduction13
Page 1 and 2: Why we need European cultural polic
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Page 6 and 7: Prologue When I decided to research
Page 8 and 9: If I had the opportunity of startin
Page 12 and 13: obstacles encountered during the pe
Page 14 and 15: Part 1Theconceptualframe ofthe stud
Page 16 and 17: argument referred to identifying ex
Page 18 and 19: Gray called for comparative researc
Page 20 and 21: The Council of Europe and comparati
Page 22 and 23: a broader understanding of culture,
Page 24 and 25: The first one is a `macro’ dimens
Page 26 and 27: Part 2European Union,culture andcul
Page 28 and 29: narrow sense - still remains exclud
Page 30 and 31: Niedobitek (see page 29) drew atten
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Page 34 and 35: In spring 2005 two founding members
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Page 38 and 39: while enlargement negotiations were
Page 40 and 41: ights.56 Since the mid-1990s, the E
Page 42 and 43: This included information about Cha
Page 44 and 45: Gradual development and introductio
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Page 48 and 49: Èventually, a solution was found,
Page 50 and 51: In regard to other taxes, opinions
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Preliminary assessmentof the impact
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Changes in taxation policies were n
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policy areas and the ensuing transf
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Part 3What willthe futurebring?68 P
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Manuel Barroso, President of the Eu
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has been embraced by the European m
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Instead of a conclusionThe aim of t
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1 The French term acquis communauta
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14 When deciding on the methodology
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30 OJ C 336, 19/12/1992.31 1st Repo
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45 After the signing and entry into
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65 See Annex 1 for a copy of theque
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81 32001G0731(01) Council Resolutio
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culture, which needs to be exempt f
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Aubry P, (2000)The `Television with
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Draus F, (2001)Èst-Ouest, le dit e
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Futo P, Cuculić J, et al (2002)Met
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Laher L, (2001)Trapped in the notio
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Puchala D J, (1971)Òf blind men, e
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Weidenfeld W, Wessels W, (1997)Euro
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2. In your opinion, have the cultur
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13. Have there been any changes in
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Annex 3List of CPRA jury membersMil
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Political Economy Cultural Economic
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Annex 4GlossaryAcquis communautaire
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Cultural marketsA term used to desc
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Third countriesEU documents sometim
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Author: Nina ObuljenEditor: Janet H
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