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

The impact of EU enlargement on public policiesA final element in the methodological framework is how to study the impact of the Europeanenlargement on public policies and, in this case, cultural policies. As culture remains mostlyoutside the acquis communautaire, a search for the most appropriate methodology has to startwith an overview of methods applied in other policy areas and an assessment of whether thosemethods can be applied to culture.Since the signing of the Treaties of Rome in 1957,17 the European Community has grown andaccepted new members.18 One of the main driving forces for the enlargement was the fact that,with each new member state, the free trade zone, known then as the common market, grew andthis created new opportunities for economic development and enhanced trade.With the 2004 enlargement, the EU now embraces 450 million people and became one of thebiggest free trade zones in the world. It is therefore understandable that the primary focus ofpolitical interest in each enlargement has been its economic costs and benefits. The most recentwave of enlargement was, however, also regarded as fundamentally important for achievingpolitical stability and completing the political and economic transition that started in central andeastern Europe with the fall of communism in 1989.Since the beginning of European integration, the idea of building a powerful and competitivesingle market has always been accompanied with discussions about the political implications ofintegration. This has included a commitment to a Europe free of war and the conflicts that havehitherto dominated its history, a space governed by the rule of law and respect for human rights.European intellectuals and policy-makers have been discussing other issues, such as how `tobring Europe closer to its citizens’, including reflections on several issues relevant for culturalpolicy such as European identity, intercultural dialogue and cultural cooperation, mobility of artistsand cultural professionals, and so on. While these important issues may have been debated, it ismanifestly difficult to assess the practical impact of European integration, or in our case Europeanenlargement, on all these topics and more.It is relatively easy to establish economic benchmarks, or to demand a degree of harmonization bya particular deadline. However, it is difficult, if not impossible, in advance, to set targets in fieldsnormally reserved for member states, such as cultural policy, especially where priorities and theexpectations of the EU were difficult to grasp. The EU’s enlargement policy has, not surprisingly,been clear and well articulated in some policy areas and difficult to grasp in others.The European Union has an extremely complex set of policies towards the countries of centraland eastern Europe. It has been pointed out that the enlargement policy is not one specific andarticulated policy, nor is it a simple combination of all existing policies, but that it is best describedas a multi-level policy with at least two dimensions (Sedelmeier, in Wallace and Wallace [2000]).The impact of EU enlargement on public policies25