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

policy areas and the ensuing transfer of methodology will indirectly bring about improvements inthe capacities of statistical offices of the new member states; this should benefit all sectors.However, at least in the first period, areas which are not directly affected by data-gatheringrequests from the EU will remain marginalized. Even though many researchers of culturalpolicies in transition countries put the improvement of cultural statistics as a high priority, giventhe ambiguous position of culture in the Treaty and the lack of a legal basis for more directinvolvement of the Eurostat, it is not surprising that most of the questionnaire respondents andthe reports which I analyzed, expressed the view that UNESCO and the European Audio-visualObservatory remained the chief resource for the improvement of statistics in the newmember states.These provisional conclusions cannot overlook the impact of cultural financing on trends in culturalpolicy. Community funding programmes brought many changes and indirectly contributed to thereform of cultural financing in new member states, to increased openness in the way projects arefunded, and to the transfer of knowledge. They also initiated new partnerships and new formsof cooperation.Sometimes these funding programmes offered a direct incentive for cross-border projects andcooperation. Even though Culture 2000 has been fiercely criticized for its bureaucracy andmodest funding, it has certainly had a very positive impact in the new member states. The roleof cultural contact points – part of the structure of Culture 2000 – as places for information andhelp in applying to the Community programmes has also contributed to better cultural cooperationbetween artists and cultural operators in new EU member states.Culture was marginalPreliminary assessment of the impact of the enlargement on cultural policies in countries ontransition confirms that the EU did not have any specific enlargement policy referring to culture.The long-established policy of excluding culture from harmonization and leaving it in under theaegis of individual member states, meant that the specific needs of future member states in thecultural field were not addressed during enlargement. Because there was no formulated policy,there was also no direct need for reforms of cultural systems or specific incentives for structuralchanges in the cultural field.It is obvious that cultural budgets and other internal issues which make up most of the methodsfor putting cultural policy into practice, should be left to the EU’s individual states to decide.However, the issue of a having a `European policy on culture’ will not go away until theEU adequately discusses, from a cultural point of view, those policy areas that have an indirecteffect on culture.Even officially proclaimed EU goals of enhancing unity in diversity, protecting and promotingcultural diversity, and contributing to `European added value’, were not addressed during the66Part 2 Preliminary assessment of the impact of EU enlargement