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

has been embraced by the European member states internationally and internally within theirnational borders, it has not been adequately applied on the level of the European Union thusleaving much space for different interpretations of cultural diversity as I have already explained inanalyzing Article 151.Following the logic of UNESCO’s 2005 ConventionThis is why I believe that, if member states agree to proceed with more proactive policy-making,a positive step might be to follow the logic of the Convention on the protection and promotion ofthe diversity of cultural expressions that was adopted at UNESCO in October 2005.In Europe, this would mean accepting regulation of some aspects of culture, not in order tounnecessarily harmonize rules, but rather to ensure that other policies having an impact on culturedo not override cultural policy measures (Ruffolo 2001). Secondly, there would need to beexplicit recognition of the fact that cultural matters have, in some way, already become a commonresponsibility.101The next task would be to create a clearer interpretation of the concept of `culture’, not leavingthis by default to court judgments, which tend to give primacy to already well-defined principles inother policy fields, such as freedom of movement, competition rules, and so on. A clearer definitionof the concept and its boundaries would make it easier to distinguish between cultural matterspertaining to individual member states and those which would be better dealt with at EU level.A consequence of this more proactive policy towards culture would be to oblige all memberstates to take steps to not only to protect and but also to promote cultural diversity and toencourage a better balance of cultural exchange among European countries.102If such a policy was to become a Commission responsibility, then the Commission would haveto monitor and assess exchanges of cultural goods and services from the cultural point of view.That in turn would create a need to develop adequate cultural statistics in all member states.Similar to the UNESCO Convention, in which certain incentives are foreseen for developingcountries,103 this principle could be used to create a framework of EU regulationfor the promotion of more balanced trade and exchange within Europe, whether or not thoseexchanges were commercial.104 (So far, EU countries have seemed to be more concernedwith the imbalances of cultural trade between the EU as a whole and, pre-eminently, the UnitedStates, at the expense of those in Europe.) Indirectly, this could also have an impact on policiesthat are blamed for creating obstacles for mobility.72Part 3 What will the future bring?