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

The Council of Europe and comparative researchof cultural policiesThe Council of Europe was the first European organization to take on the responsibility ofdeveloping cultural cooperation across the European continent. As early as 1954, membercountries adopted the European Cultural Convention, marking the beginning of European culturalcooperation. During the 1960s, a concept of cultural democracy, embraced through numerousinitiatives, promoted a model of cultural development based on animation socio-culturelle,decentralization, participation and later democratization, as well as intersectorial cooperation.In Oslo in 1976 the first Council of Europe conference of ministers of culture of the memberstates was held.12 By this time most member countries had ministers of culture, and theCouncil had adopted numerous documents referring to culture.13 When, cultural differencesnotwithstanding, states agree to common rules, they can draw up an international agreement,which may be legally binding, or simply a recommendation. These are often known in internationallaw as standard-setting instruments. Such instruments, adopted within the Council of Europeframework, had helped improve cultural policy-making across Europe and to the setting up of legalstandards, which were widely accepted by member states.For the purposes of this study, however, the Council’s most interesting initiative was the Europeanprogramme of national cultural policy reviews, which started in 1985 and continues to the present.These reviews analyzed the cultural situation in individual countries and helped them to devisecultural strategies. More importantly the project has highlighted some serious methodological,practical and political problems, which have not only made comparative research of culturalpolicies in Europe difficult, but have also inhibited the development of common cultural policy ofthe European Union.The first reports were about France and Sweden, two countries which already had well-developedsystems of monitoring cultural policies. For many countries that undertook this exercise in thefollowing years, writing a national report represented the first attempt systematically to describe allcultural sectors and all policies which have direct or indirect impact on culture.14Lessons learnedIn the extremely valuable study analyzing the results and achievements of the programme, Gordonidentified several limitations and obstacles that appeared during this process (Gordon, in Gordonand Mundy 2001). The difficulties which were revealed serve to bolster the argument that it isimpossible to imagine a common European cultural policy.The first problem was understanding the term, `national’.15 Several European states with afederal structure of government were unable to define what any national cultural policy might be.Even though this included countries with elaborated cultural policies and long traditions of publicsupport, they did not want to, or could not, participate in this project.22Part 1 The conceptual frame of the study