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Master of Arts Thesis
Euroculture
University of Göttingen (Home)
University of Groningen (Host)
August 1
st2017
Culture and the European Union: Advocacy or Governance?
The agenda behind the EU-funded cultural projects since the Maastricht
Treaty.
Submitted by: Coline Guiol S3069400 coline.guiol@gmail.com 0033628525424 Supervised by: Prof. Johan Kolsteeg (Groningen)Prof. Moritz Ege (Göttingen)
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“What would happen if culture succeeded in giving the
European project a completely different meaning or sense?”
Pascal Gielen
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1 “The Power of Culture and the Arts - European Alliance Pdf,” 3, accessed July 14, 2017,
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Table of Contents
... 1 Table of Contents ... 3 Introduction ... 5 Methodology ... 9 Data Collection ... 9 Data analysis ... 10Chapter 1: Theoretical, Conceptual Framework and Literature Review .... 11
1.1 Genesis of the topic and background of the research ... 11
1.2 Conceptual Framework & Literature Review ... 13
Chapter 2: Culture in the European Union: its complex semantic and its place in the Cultural Policies. ... 25
2.1 Culture: definitions and meanings. ... 25
2.2 Culture in the political construction of the EU: the Treaties. ... 29
Chapter 3: The European Union is an advocate for Culture and the European cultural diversity. ... 33
3.1 Creation of cultural programmes: from Culture 2000 to Creative Europe. 33 3.2 Culture as a socio-economic tool: The European Capitals of Culture which develops cities and regions. ... 36
3.3 A good cultural impact by the EU: Leeuwarden-Fryslân 2018. ... 37
Chapter 4: The use of Culture by the EU to achieve its agenda. ... 39
4.1 “The Invention of European Tradition”… ... 39
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The selection process of the ECoC... 40
The European Dimension and economic purposes ... 41
Conclusion ... 43
List of Abbreviations ... 45
ANNEX 1: ... 46
ANNEX 2: ... 47
Article 167 – Lisbon Treaty ... 47
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Introduction
On 16 May 2017 an administrative arrangement with EU National Institutes for Culture was agreed by the European Union. The arrangement outlines joint principles, values and objectives, which are intended to underpin this cooperation as well as the priority areas for cooperation, together with all practical arrangements for its implementation.2
With the new decisions to open the European Capitals of Culture to the countries which are part of the European Economic Area3 and the recent statements from the Commission about Culture4, both from 2017, it seems that international and European cultural cooperation have a bright future ahead. Promoting European cultural diversity has never been as taken care of by the European Union while many European countries grow more and more Eurosceptic.5 As the Treaty of Rome has turned sixty years old in 2017, the EU is now facing a popular crisis with Brexit in June 2016 and the rise of anti-EU populists in France, the Netherlands, Austria and Poland. After seventy years of construction and integration, the EU has yet to justify its existence and legitimize its necessity. It turns out that the EU, struggling with a popularity and economic crisis, needs Culture to create or revive the sense of European identity and European consciousness among the European people6 as it needed Culture to build itself in a first place.
“If I had to do it again, I would begin with Culture” supposedly said Jean Monet.7 This famous quotation, wrongly assigned to one of the founding fathers of Europe8,
2 “Proposal to Extend European Capitals of Culture to EFTA/EEA Countries - European Commission,”
accessed July 3, 2017, https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/creative-europe/news/20160701-efta-eea-european-capitals-culture_en.
3 Ibid.
4 “Putting Culture at the Heart of EU International Relations - Culture - European Commission,” Culture,
accessed July 11, 2017, /culture/news/20170119-putting-culture-heart-eu-international-relations_en.
5 “Rising Euroscepticism ‘Poses Existential Threat to EU’ | World News | The Guardian,” accessed July
11, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/mar/03/brexit-has-put-other-leaders-off-wanting-to-leave-says-ec-vice-president.
6 Shore Cris, Building Europe: The Cultural Politics of European Integration (Routeledge, 2000). 7 “Jean Monnet Chair: Presentation,” accessed December 27, 2016,
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marks the starting point of what will become a “Union”. Indeed, it was first the European Coal and Steel Community (1951), then a European Economic Community (1957) that opened the doors to the creation of the European Communities (1965) and the European Union. From a community based on coal, steel and economic purposes, the use of “European Culture” as a common denominator among the European Communities gave birth to today’s EU. Since the Maastricht Treaty, culture has thus been a clear objective driven by community and political principles. The EU became a social and cultural entity, not only an economic one. At a time when a Europe “closer to the citizens” was being debated, the care for culture aimed to strengthen non-economic objectives and enlarge the European Union’s actions on a more social level. The objective was to improve the fulfillment of member states’ cultures by respecting their national and regional diversities and also by highlighting a common cultural heritage. Thus, cultural policies and programmes appear to be additional steps towards European construction and integration. With billions of euros invested and thousands of cultural and educational programmes funded among its 28 members, the EU seems to care for Culture’s accessibility and promotion.
Behind this advocacy, the EU has been growing both geographically and politically. The promotion of Europe’s cultural diversity might indeed help the EU achieving its political agenda: a Union that now governs 28 members. If the EU has used Culture to create a sense of belonging among the people throughout its construction history, it might also use Culture to legitimize itself despite a popularity cri sis today.
Therefore, why and how does the EU fund Culture and cultural projects since 1992?
Today, thousands of projects and organizations work towards Culture thanks to EU ’s funding. Although it is most of the time very genuine, it seems that the EU f inds an advantage to fund these projects that will enhance and strengthen the sense of belonging to a European cultural entity. This consequence is part of the EU’s agenda: to expand, integrate more and more countries and this being more powerful as a political entity.
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The goal of this research if to draw a parallel between Culture advocacy, the Treaties and European governance by using the example of the European Capitals of Culture (ECoC). Among the various EU-funded projects, the ECoC are pretty relevant as they combine European and national culture enhancement and the way they are selected each year illustrates the cultural advocacy of the EU tinted of self-promotion. The ECoC have been promoted and funded by the Commission for thirty five years and claim to “highlight the richness and diversity of cultures in Europe” while “increasing European citizens' sense of belonging to a common cultural area”.9 The objective of the ECoC is thus pretty clear and was made possible through the European treaties and the unclear political statement about Culture they hold. In other words, this thesis aims to explore the ambiguity of the EU being an advocate for Culture by funding projects that promote Europe’s cultural diversity while using these to achieve its political agenda: empower itself. Overall, this research also wants to explore the fact that a clear statement on a Cultural Policy remain absent from the European Treaties which allows this ambiguity in a first place.
The key objectives of this research are:
- To establish a current state of the research about how the EU has come up with its cultural policy and what is this cultural policy (if there is one).
- To bring a broad and general definition of Culture in order to help understanding the scope of intervention from the EU: does it intervene with the Arts and aesthetic kind of Culture or the feeling of belonging to one common heritage and values within a population?
- To expose the current official EU’s policies towards Culture since its first establishment in 1992.
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- To prove that the EU’s policies and actions towards culture by the institutions has helped numerous of national, European or regional projects to be born and sustainable.
- To show that the selection of these projects does not always go without another motivation which does not answer the core principles exposed in the Treaties.
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Methodology
The methodology used for preparing this paper consists of the readings and analysis of documents and books that touch upon the EU and its relations to the policy-making in the cultural field. This includes the analysis of the Treaties, the historical background of each policy and the actions the EU has taken in the field of culture throughout its history.
Data Collection
Mainly, the information found to write this thesis was found in the readings of multiple documents, articles and books. An addition source of data was the Alba Lecture given by the Euroculture Master Programme in May 2017 that involves a speaker, Jelle Burggraff, who is the head of the Cultural Affairs in the Leeuwarden-Fryslân 2018 event. His presentation gave all the information about the genesis of the project, the application process, the selection and the implementation of the cultural programme of the year to come. In a concrete example, this presentation summarizes why and how the EU selects a project to be funded with its requirements and criteria: the outcomes of such a project and the programme presented by Jelle Burggraff thus give an idea of how the EU can be a true advocate for Culture when promoting Leeuwarden when the selection process and the communication around it show the more hidden-hand of the EU when it has an agenda. It is the notes taken and the Q&A session at the end of the presentation that provided the content about Leeuwarden-Fryslân 2018 in this thesis.
Readings of academic books and articles laid the basis of the theoretical and conceptual framework. As not much scholars and researchers have written about the EU’s cultural policy, they regularly quote each other’s work in their analysis and references. Therefore, all the sources used to conceptualize this research were found throughout the readings of each of these books.
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relevant content for the thesis (for the cultural programmes of the ECoC). The websites are useful indeed to be up to date for the current European programmes and projects on culture as well as valuable archives. The theories and analysis can then be verified and illustrated by the rhetoric presented in the EU’s official websites and the description of the projects they publish.
Official documents such as the Treaties are easily accessible online (EU’s official websites or not) and their availability is very useful to complete and study the readings made about them.
Data analysis
The content collected from the ABBA lecture on Leeuwarden is a simple retranscription of the notes taken during the presentation and the questions asked during the Q&A. This gathers all the information about the project (from application to selection and preparation of the year) and more general knowledge about the ECoC. The data was then analyzed based on the conceptual and theoretical framework which explains how the EU, through the funding and selectin of such a cultural project, helps a region and a culture to be highlighted and developed (as stated in the Treaties) but also the selection is a result of a political and/or economic agenda by the EU.
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Chapter 1: Theoretical, Conceptual Framework and
Literature Review.
1.1 Genesis of the topic and background of the research
“The humanities and the arts are being cut away, in both primary/secondary and college/university education, in virtually every nation of the world. Seen by policy-makers as useless frills, at a time when nations must cut away all useless things in order to stay competitive in the global market, they are rapidly losing their place in curricula, and also in the minds and hearts of parents and children. Indeed, what we might call the humanistic aspects of science and social science—the imaginative, creative aspect, and the aspect of rigorous critical thought—are also losing ground as nations prefer to pursue short-term profit by the cultivation of the useful and highly applied skills suited to profitmaking.”
These words by the American scholar and philosopher Martha Nussbaum in Not for
Profit10 impacted my thoughts on the value of Culture and my envy to research on it. As
a Humanity and Social Sciences student, I came to recently ask myself whether it is “worth it” to embrace a professional career in the cultural field or not. As Culture, Arts and everything in between are not “valuable” enough on the market of our modern society, I genuinely wondered if I could make it one day to financial independence. My trust and thrive for Culture and its accessibility motivates my professional choices but it is not helped nor encouraged by today’s democracies and policies, including froom the EU. Culture, Arts and Humanities and their accessibility are for me an important issue. Everyone, regardless of its social and economic background must be entitled to access culture and cultural tools. Culture is a major political concern and its circulation among society is an emancipation factor. People need culture to think, to be critical: in other words, to be free.
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I realized that the choice for a career in a field that is not made for profit is not easy, especially as I started searching for internship and job opportunities in the Cultural filed. Thankfully, an internship placement of six months within an organization funded by Creative Europe11 erased my doubts and now more than ever I aim to word towards culture and its mass-diffusion on a local, national, European and international level. This introduction to an EU funded organization also grew my curiosity on how, why and what exactly does the EU choose to fund a project or not. Overall, the research project of this thesis relies on my appeal for the cultural projects funded by the EU and the readings I have been doing concerning European cultural policies and the European construction. Naturally, I was driven to a few critical books that researched on the way the EU has used culture maybe not for culture itself but also for its own sake. As a pro-European myself and culture enthusiastic, this grew my curiosity and I wanted to know more by enlarging the panel or readings and adding the study of the European Treaties. The choice of the ECoC a ‘concrete example” in the study for this research was motivated by the fact that I have always found this label fantastic for both the cities selected and the people who will have access to it. But it is the flaws in Marseille post-ECoC in 2013 that resurfaced during my readings about the EU political agenda behind the funded ECoC that made want to know more about it. The final decision to tackle the ECoC was taken when I found out about Leeuwarden being the next ECoC in 2018. As a master student at the University of Groningen, at 60 kilometers from Leeuwarden, I saw an opportunity to know more about the project for the sake of my research. I decided to restrain my thesis to the ECoC because as it is limited in length and content, I could not cover all the EU-funded cultural projects as concrete examples in one of my chapters.
Finally, it is the low number of academic book and research content about European cultural policy-ies that drove me into this field. There is more content when it comes to a specific side of Culture: European policies in the movie industry, music, books, etc. However there is no official and proper European Cultural Policy and it is not an easy task to find a good amount of academic sources which can give a solid background knowledge on this field. A few names regularly come out as ‘specialists’ of the question, most of them being from the late 1990’s – 2010’s decades. The recent interest
11 Internship placement as part of the MA Euroculture programme at the Association Européenne des
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from researchers and writers for this topic made me think that there were a lot left to explore.
1.2 Conceptual Framework & Literature Review
Besides my personal interest for Culture and European cultural projects, a few readings shaped the thesis topic and gave a background to the additional academic readings that fed this reflection.
“Even before Europe was united in an economic level or was conceived at the level of economic interests and trade, it was culture that united all the countries of Europe. The arts, literature, music are the connecting link of Europe”12
This statement The Power of Culture and the Arts from the European Alliance calls the EU to consider Culture as a sustainable project for the well-being of both the societies and the EU itself. Because the EU “finds its basis in a shared culture”, it is essential to make long-term projects in the cultural filed to also sustain Europe. As the fate of Culture is being decided by the European Institutions (the Commission, the Parliament and the Council), the European Alliance urges the EU to include it in all areas of policy making and thus secure the EU2020 strategy. This publication also suggests that, unlike the social and economic fields, the impact of cultural policies are not being measured by the Commission although the Article 167 from the Lisbon Treaty states otherwise (end of paragraph 4)13. This summary highlighted the cultural policy-making issue for the first time in my conceptual readings.
Then, researcher Nina Obuljen brought more clarification to what is at stake with the European cultural policies in Why we need European cultural policies: the impact of EU
enlargement on cultural policies in transition countries. Published for the Cultural
Policy Research Award, she writes that the EU has used culture to establish a European Identity, a common heritage and values as a factor of development for the EU members
12 Italian writer and director Dario Fo in “The Power of Culture and the Arts - European Alliance Pdf,” 2, accessed July 14, 2017.
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while “culture as a field has been marginalized in a majority of studies about European integration as well as in the eyes of those determining priorities at the European level”.14 Nina Obuljen touches upon the debate around the need for the EU to have a cultural policy and the methodological problems which have led the EU to treat culture in an ambiguous way. Overall, she thinks that the structure of the EU itself is not compatible with the national policies on culture, which is problematic since the national institutes and policies have a better hand on cultural projects that EU’s policies15. Through a policy analysis, Obuljen explains that the EU should coordinate its policy towards Culture despite the legal, political and ideological obstacles from over 28 members. Her research was also not easy to theorize, as she tried to make a comparative study of the cultural policies in Europe:
“While it is fair to say that each area of policy – economic, social and so on – has its own unique aspects, additional problems arise in cultural policy, because its content and scope is defined differently in specific states or traditions, often a consequence of the numerous definitions of the term ‘culture’ itself.”16
Culture is difficult to define and may vary from a country to another, thus it is just as challenging to define “cultural policy”. Among all the approaches she enumerates in her article, she comes to the conclusion that ‘cultural policy’ cannot be theorized and set in time. Therefore, every research or study made on cultural policies and the understanding of Culture at a European level may as well rely on their own definition of the terms and conceptual frameworks. As many other authors who wrote about this issue, Obuljen mentions a few possible definitions of the term Culture and briefly dresses a history of cultural decisions on a European level through the Institutions (Council of Europe, European Commission). She points out how, at the very beginning of the EU (1979), the Council of Europe’s members already disagreed on a common cultural policy which will not jeopardize their own national ones.
14 “Why We Need European Cultural Policies - Nina Obuljen,” 9, accessed July 3, 2017, http://www.culturenet.cz/res/data/004/000564.pdf.
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Author Annabelle Littoz-Monnet also shaped the framework of this essay by mentioning the recent official policy agenda in the cultural policy-making in Brussels while launching the new version of Creative Europe (2013).17 The Commission was indeed happy to announce that the new programme will foster jobs, economic growth and social cohesion as a sustainable path toward Europe 2020. However she points out that this agenda “differs quite radically from former European Union discourses on Cultural policy, which laid the emphasis on culture as a key element in the definition process of regional, national and European identities”. The lucrative aspect becomes one of the main purposes of the EU when it comes to make a cultural policy. This reading introduced this research to the first mention of an agenda other than a political one behind the funding of Culture by the EU. Annabelle Littoz-Monnet explains the governance the EU uses through cultural policy-making: “because of the history of ‘market integration’ as a driving force, terminology associated with harmonization and free exchange may more often find its way in the policy process”.18 The EU was – and still is – a conductive geographical space to economic exchange and growth. She thus brings up this agenda that also touches the cultural policies and cultural programmes. The funding of a project will then also rely on mercantile criteria, besides being selected for its ‘europeanness’. Her theory helps understanding how some projects and ECoC are being selected also for financial reasons with a goal of return on investment (as the cultural sector produces each year around 2.6% to the EU GDP.)19 Encouraging cultural projects is indeed encouraging creativity, which leads to innovation and economic growth. The cultural sector is then related to a ‘creative industry’ which is highly wanted by the Commission. Later on, she combines this agenda with the one aiming to create a sense of belonging to one culture among the European citizens and foster an identity. These various motivations behind each political decisions on culture made at a European level brings the eternal debate on whether or not a project should be funded for profit and/or for creating a sense of European identity or for the sake of Culture itself. The imprecision with which the treaties have defined Culture and the EU’s cultural policies allows these type of selection. But at the end, the funded projects are not selected to highlight European’s cultural diversity but rather to make a profit and/or create a sustainable symbol of togetherness among European citizens.
17 Annabelle Littoz-Monnet, The European Union and Culture: Between Economic Regulation and
European Cultural Policy (Manchester University Press, 2007), 25.
18 Ibid., 27.
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This context establishes the first approach of this research and gave a bit of a background to the further readings that helped conceptualizing the topic. The main readings can be divided into two main subtopics: the ones that bring definitions and clarification on the term Culture and the ones that explain the European Cultural Laws and their rhetoric in the Treaties and what is at stake in the actual actions made in that field from a EU perspective.
First, a similar vision to Annabelle Littoz-Monnet’s about the European Cultural policies can be found in Céline de Romainville’s book European Law and Cultural
Policies: “Even if culture today remains more than ever a privileged area of work on
meanings and for critical analysis, it has been subject to a massive globalized market. In that general context, European Law has acquired an increasing pre-eminence on culture”.20 Belgian researcher and lecturer at the Catholic University of Louvain Céline Romainville gathered in one volume eleven studies by elven researchers in the field of European Law and cultural policies. The series of contributions in this book will thus help analyzing the place of Culture in the Treaties, more specifically in the Article 167 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU – Lisbon Treaty).
Her contribution entitled “The Multidimensionality of Cultural Policies Tested by European Law” shapes the contours of the definition of the term Culture by bringing five different dimension of the word “Culture”. The multidimensionality of ‘culture’ is then explored in the European Law and Treaties through every contribution from all the authors in the book.
In the section ‘European Competences in the Cultural Field’, Rachael Craufurd Smith analyses the Article 167 of the Lisbon Treaty, the one that sustained the EU cultural policy and gave the space for two culture programmes (Culture 2000 and later Creative
Europe). Despite an improved frame and more detailed goals of what these programmes
want to achieve since 1992, their impact of the European population remains limited due to a low budget and limited engagement. At the end, and it is the same conclusion as in her book Culture and European Union Law (Oxford, 2007), it seems that the EU
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has implemented (and still is) an industrial policy for Europe’s cultural industries rather than a proper European Cultural Policy.21 Belgian scholar Hugues Dumont completes this study in his contribution ‘The Cultural Competences of the European Union and their Interactions with Domestic Cultural Policies’. He underlines two possible reflexions of the cultural capacities of the EU: the economic integration has a significant negative impact on what the EU cultural policies can do on one hand and the EU’s cultural capacities has a limited positive impact on the other hand. This lack of balance actually relies on legal basis of the EU itself: the EU is not federal, nor a States confederation, but a “pluri-national federation”.22 This structure of the EU stops any concrete actions in the cultural field that will not bother any member State.
In ‘Taking cultural Aspects into Account in EU Law and Policies’ by Evangelina Psychogiopoulou, it is stated that the European Institutions has always been taking actions in the cultural field although it had no legal frame. The Treaty Establishing the European Economic Community (Treaty of Rome) only focused on the “economic provisions” of the cultural sector in order to harmonize the while European common market (Article l28). There was thus a need to recreate a new statement on culture thirty five years later with the Treaty of Maastricht, Article 128. The goal was to protect and maintain the member states’ cultural diversity and uniqueness, all contained in one unique political union. However, each of these members will have the responsibility of its own cultural policy. The Article 167 (TFUE) would only be here to encourage and promote cultural cooperation between the member states while highlighting “the diversity of their culture”.23 Evangelina Psychogiopoulou distinguishes two main phases in the establishment of the EU’s cultural policy post-Maastricht. The first one, immediately following the signature of the Treaty, can be seen as the genuine advocacy of the EU to study the needs for cultural “on a case by case basis” through research and surveys conducted by the Commission and the Parliament. The second phase marks the launch of the Commission’s Cultural Agenda (European Agenda for Culture in a
Globalizing World) in 2005. Its main objectives is to maintain the cultural diversity and
cooperation on one hand and to “promote culture as a catalyst for creativity in the
21 Ibid., 12:60.
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framework of the Lisbon strategy for growth and jobs” on the other hand.24 In other words, the Article 167 from the TFEU offers a safe legal frame for the “protection and promotion of cultural diversity” as well as the liberty for the Institutions to take liberties on cultural actions outside of what the Treaty stands for. Paragraph 5 allows them indeed to “pursue cultural diversity objectives through EU policies other than culture”. This chapter shows the ambiguity of the European Law towards culture: the EU is a real advocate for Culture thanks to its Articles but allows a governance (economic and political) if needed.
The essay by Jean-Christophe Barbato ‘The Effects of EU Interventions on Cultural Diveristy’ explains quite well the legal meaning of the Articles about Culture by the EU. He insists that the Commissions carefully uses the terms “cultural sector” (and not just ‘Culture’) which defines the “socio-economic whole which gathers the people and businesses that produce and distribute cultural goods and services”.25 The cultural sector is thus subjected to the market Law which allowed various actions towards the enhancement of a European heritage by developing tourism and a geographic area’s attractiveness (like the European Capitals of Culture for instance). Barbato then underlines the incredible large field of actions of the Commission in the Cultural
Agenda aforementioned: the common market, education, youth, languages,
communication, social and economic cohesion, agriculture, sustainable development, employment, media, information, research, external relations, etc.26 The cultural diversity is then reflected on the very diverse fields of action of the cultural policies. Very early in the European Construction’s history, the principle of “unity in diversity” seems to be important and the promotion of these cultural diversities will also mark the actions of the Commissions in its cultural programmes. The Cultural Diversity is registered in the acquis communautaires and is supposed to be the guiding principle of the European cultural actions. However, the 2005 Convention on the Protection and
Promotion of the Diversity of cultural Expressions by the UNSECO and ratified by all
European Ministers of Culture, exposes a new conception of diversity, which has
24 Ibid., 12:106.
25 Ibid., 12:171.
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become a true International Right and ideology.27 This new and important Convention on cultural diversity has a fundamental difference with the one from the EU: when the UNESCO assures that every State in the world is entitled to promote its cultural uniqueness, this right is much more framed and limited in the European Treaty. The member States’ actions remain indeed supervised because of the European’s issue of integration. The principle of diversity becomes paired with the principle of unity. Here again we notice the limit to full cultural expression by the nature of the EU itself, as a common political entity, which can only exist if there is a sense of belonging to one unique culture and not only to a national one.
In ‘Effect of EU Interventions in the Cultural Field from a Politologist Point of View’ (Section IV), Jean-Gilles Lowies explains the Europeanization of the EU’s cultural actions and their apparent governance agenda. The Europeanization here consists of the EU indirectly influencing the national cultural policies of its members, acting like an invisible hand behind its Articles on Culture (or hidden-hand, according to K.V Mulcalhy and Jean-Gilles Lowies). If the Treaties give the liberty to the National States to promote their own Culture, a cognitive Europeanization phenomenon is actually rising up because of the European integration process.28 Culture has always been in movement in the European Construction: it started out very slowly and evolved into a dedicated article in the Maastricht Treaty. However, the European Cultural Policy remains limited and complex because of all the different agendas and the hidden-hand behind every decision. In that matter, the EU acts in favor of market regulation by “regulating the cultural initiatives”.29 This authority gives the impression not to conduct concrete actions in the cultural field while it actually influences the cultural activities and the financing if this sector. As the author summarizes: “There is a shift from a UE’s policy at the service of culture to a culture at the service of the EU. Thus, there is a European cultural policy that helps Culture building European Integration”.30 Finally, the European cultural policies do exist but are not so visible due to a lack of a concrete and coherent single project. This specificity appears to be part of the “European
27 Ibid., 12:187: Barbato quoting F. Martel in Mainstreaming, Enquête sur la guerre globale de la culture
et des médias.
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rhetoric” which consists of having a project using only broad notions in order to create a unity by promoting a diversity.31
Another book gave this research the necessary background to understand the complexity of the policy-making on Culture by the EU. Rachael Craufurd Smith (also mentioned in Céline Romainville’s book) published Culture and European Law in 2004, filled with contributions from other authors and her own. Part I, entitled ‘The Development of Cultural Policy by the European Community’ and written by Rachael herself is of great interest to understand the position of Culture and Cultural affairs in the political construction of the EU. Her first chapter analyzes what roles the Institutions played in building cultural activities on a European level prior the Maastricht Treaty which officially introduced a full Article on cultural matters. It also explains why and how the Article 151 of the Maastricht Treaty was written and if it puts enough basis “on which Community cultural policy can be constructed in the future”.32 Part IV ‘Culture Identity and European Integration’ also by Rachael Craufurd Smith clarifies the agenda of the EU behind the Article 151. She explains indeed how its rhetoric has helps to foster a common European identity among European people.33 Her research and publication are a great help to understand the scope of the creation of the recent cultural policies by the EU.
In that matter, one of the most important source of information is Building Europe: The
Cultural Politics of European Integration by Cris Shore. In this book, the author writes
that the core reason for the EU to create Cultural policies is because Culture is a powerful tool to bring people closer to one another; to “forge an ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe”.34 Although published in 2000, his study has a special resonance today as the EU suffers from a popularity crisis in 2017:
“Corruption and scandals in Brussels and declining public support for European institutions highlight serious deficiencies, and reveal a corrosive lack
31 Ibid., 12:277–78.
32 Rachael Craufurd Smith, Culture and European Union Law (Oxford University Press, 2004), 19–20. 33 Ibid., 277.
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of democracy and accountability. In the search for the solutions, the EU has increasingly turned to ‘cultural actions’”.35
This statement gives a first insight of the political agenda of the EU behind its actions in the cultural field. Shore offers a critical (and rather skeptical) study on the European construction and European governance through an anthropological study of the cultural politics of European integration. The Maastricht Treaty seems to have opened the way a social and cultural European integration rather than just an economic one.36 For that matter, Shore answers key questions: “what role does culture play in the process of European integration and how are EU-professionals using this concept in their effort to create a more coherent sense of identity and belonging among the European citizens?” Cris Shore wants to understand how the EU has been constructed among people’s minds through the study of the different conceptions of culture and identity and how these have been framed into policies. For this, he focuses on some EU-funded projects “designed to affect what EU calls the Europeanization on the public sector”:37 Overall, he analyzes the schemes the EU uses to “shape the public opinion and advance the project for European political integration”. His study on the Commission’s political structure also helps understanding how the cultural policies are being made from the highest political level of the EU and how the national States have grown suspicious of the European institutions, which does not help to develop a genuine cultural policy: “The problem with the European institutions is that they represent the EU’s interests rather than the individual member States”38.
In Politique culturelle européenne, Renaud Denuit presents a general overview of all the cultural actions taken today by the EU. He asks however what is the cultural policy of the EU – if there is one – and how can it be qualified as European? For this he will first explain the different interpretations of the term Culture itself in a whole chapter. From its etymology to its different dimensions, his explanation of the term is similar and quite complementary to the one by Céline Romainville in the first chapter of her book, mentioned earlier. Then, in chapter 2 and 3, Denuit gives an interesting background of the accession of culture in the EU: from the first initiatives by the
35 Ibid.
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Council of Europe to its mention in the Treaty of Maastricht. Chapter 4 describes the public opinion on Culture and the importance it should have in the EU as well as how the people from Europe consume Culture. Chapter 5 is also a great addition to the previous readings about the analysis of the treaties: Renaud Denuit agrees indeed that the term “diversity” in the recent treaties can, on a political level, be refereeing to both the cultural diversity of each member States or the entire cultural sector itself, which gather diverse artistic activities. This lack of precision by the EU serves its economic interests when it chooses to give a grant to a project. His chapter 6 is a precious source of information about the statistics of the cultural sector: its employability, its revenues, its growth… All these information are yet another factor for the EU to take action in the cultural field, especially within the EU-2020 strategy. The chapter 13 and 18 give precious details about the cultural programmes implemented by the Commission and their perspectives. This will help to know the motivations behind each launch and the types of projects that are funded by them. Finally, his chapter 14 explains the project of the European Capitals of Culture: its implementation history, the evolution of the selection process, the success stories and the limits of this label. Later on, his analysis on the Europeanization goes hand in hand with Cris Shore’s. Unlike the latter, Renuit thinks that would be inexact to talk about a Europeanization of the people’s minds as the number of funded projects are limited. Besides, if there is indeed a construction of the idea of the EU among the population, it is still very hard to prove it scientifically.39
Mario D’Angelo adds a relevant study about the EU governance in its cultural policy that resonates with Renaud Denuit’s. He defines cultural policy as the “establishment by public authority establishing objectives and actions defined based on expected results”.40 He also considers that there is a European cultural policy (and not policies), implemented by Maastricht. It is however a limited policy as it is mainly based on economic objectives and European cooperation promotion.
Limited, or almost non-existent, according to Odile Chenal in Fin(s) de la politique
culturelle? As the member States are extremely attached to their national cultural
policy, which touches upon their own national identities, the EU may not always be
39 Renaud Denuit, Politique Culturelle Européenne (Bruylant, 2016), 346.
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welcomed to intervene with it. Therefore, it seems more appropriate to talk about European programmes on culture and not a European cultural policy. She illustrates this point by mentioning that the budget of the EU for culture is even inferior to the one of a “big Opera from a medium-sized European city”.41 A fact that is rather paradoxical, considering the popular crisis the EU is facing at the moment:
“Within a democratic deficit, a participation crisis, the questioning of the common economic and social model and the fear of the ‘other’: the current European challenge is also – and most importantly – a cultural one”.
In order to conduct effective and sustainable cultural projects the cultural programmes by the Commissions are not sufficient. The EU needs a true cultural policy, a policy that goes hand in hand with the national ones and strengthen them, not against them. According to Chenal, a European cultural policy requires the setting up of a true cooperation in the objectives and tools between the members. But this will not be achievable unless the Commission has genuine and reliable factors to implement such a policy: a shared political goal by the members, a real political expertise dedicated to culture and of course a significant budget.42
Pascal Gielen and a few contributors also presents a critical vision of the EU’s position towards culture in No Culture no Europe. His part on the definition of Culture completed the previous ones (from Céline Romainville, Renaud Renuit and Cris Shore) while the rest of the book enumerates how important a real genuine advocacy towards culture will save Europe from the current “mood of crisis” it is stuck in.43 One of the agenda the EU should have behind its cultural policy would the essential communication between the different cultures that inhabits one continent. A “forced” common culture and heritage does not necessarily make it harmonious. Yet, it is the peaceful cohabitation of all the diverse national cultures from the EU that will perpetuate the Union itself:
41 Odile Chenal, Fin(s) de La Politique Culturelle? (Actes Sud, 2005). 42 Ibid., 130.
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“In a globalized world, cultures are diversified, complex and in an equally complex manner are interwoven with other cultures, which makes it hard sometime to define borders between them. Communication is therefore only possible through a shared system of signs. In other words, the notion of society as multicultural or even at conflict is also based on a shared system of signs by which that society as such can be defined in a first place. Culture remains an important binding agent that makes communication possible. This is why Europe should continually invest in such a shared system of signs”.44
It is important for Europe has to invest in a “shared system of signs” to promote a soft European Culture which will create a harmonious atmosphere among the members instead of a frustration to belong to a Union that does not really promote its members’ interests. Finally, Gielen regrets the poor interest in shaping a real advocate cultural policy by the EU which figuratively shoots itself in the foot:
“[…] very few structural instruments or active policies have been developed at the European level to include its own project in that process of assigning meaning. It is no wonder then that there is so little support for it”.45
All of these studies and opinions present a general context to the issue of Culture and Cultural policy-making by the EU. The analysis and conclusions are diverse sometimes, complementary often, and are especially essential to give role of advocate for culture as well as a ruthless political ruler.
44 Ibid., 22.
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Chapter 2: Culture in the European Union: its complex
semantic and its place in the Cultural Policies.
2.1 Culture: definitions and meanings.
Culture comes from the Latin cultura which means growing, cultivating, inhabiting. Etymologically, it is a concept that derives from nature (as in natural growth) which primarily gives an ambiguous relationship between these two terms, especially in a philosophical approach.46 According to Oxford Dictionary, culture is the “ideas, customs, and social behavior of fa particular people or society” and “the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively”.47 With multiple meanings and interpretations throughout the centuries, “Culture” has become a large polysemeous term that needs a historical and literary contexts to be defined and understood.
The modern meaning of Culture has appeared in the Renaissance (16th century) when it meant the acquired knowledge that open someone to develop judgement, taste, critics, etc. The French notion of a “cultivated” person (un homme cultivé) thus surfaced: through education, one can accumulate enough knowledge to freely have an opinion and think on everything. It is not before the 19th century and the German notion of Kultur (or Geistkultur) that the term Culture will be associated with the elements of a population’s identity in order to achieve unity in politics.48 Culture was also associated with the notion of civilization, as a way for the West to differentiate itself from the rest of the world through its “civilizing mission” (18th – 20th centuries). The goal would be to bring the Western Culture and customs to the “non-civilized”, the ones that function differently and act with other values, morals and visions than the ones hold by the colonial entity (civilization as an opposition to barbarism). Culture starts getting more and more dimensions: since the notion of Kultur and the appearance of the neologism
civilization. “Culture” is not only an immaterial gain for each individual but embraces a
46 Terry Eagleton, The Idea of Culture, vol. 19 (Wiley, 2000).
47 “Culture - Definition of Culture in English | Oxford Dictionaries,” accessed December 27, 2016, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/culture.
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more collective meaning: the value, traditions and moral characteristics are part of one Nation. Later, Karl Marx highlights the existence of class conscientiousness which means the existence of different cultures among one society depending on the socio-economic background of a person. This theory will nourish Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of counterculture and social reproduction because of a degree of accessibility and practices of Culture of a person.49 Besides, Karl Marx underlines an interesting paradox in the meaning of Culture and its etymological roots: in modern societies, it is the (preferably rich) people from the city that are ‘cultivated’ (understood here as well equipped in terms of general knowledge) while people who actually work and cultivate the land are not.50 Pierre Bourdieu and many other theorists will generate the public initiatives to generalize culture (access to the Arts and knowledge) to as many people as possible from the 1950’s on. But what kind of Arts and knowledge can be promoted and instructed to the European population when there is a debate around the European culture/identity?
It seems that the feeling of belonging to one culture today has changed quite a lot. German philosopher Wolfgang Welsh writes in ‘Transculturality: the puzzling form of cultures today’ that the former idea of separated cultures are not relevant anymore in today’s society. He quotes the German philosopher Herder who, a few centuries back, wrote that culture was composed of three elements: social homogenization, ethnic consolidation (cultures are supposed to reside within themselves), intercultural delamination (separatory concept). This vision can no longer be applicable in the globalized and inter-connected world of the 21st century.51 The modern societies, in the EU and the world, are now multicultural due to endless exchanges of people, goods and globalized communication. The EU is thus obliged to see its culture (if there is one) as part this evolution although it still has to deal with the multiple nations (and just as much cultures) that shape Europe.
It is in this confused intellectual context that the UNESCO provides its own definition of the word in its Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity: “culture is a complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, arts, morals, laws, customs and any their
49 Ibid., 8.
50 Eagleton, The Idea of Culture.
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capabilities and habits acquired by a human as a member of a society”.52 No wonder why the EU has had a hard time defining Culture to begin with: “Culture and cultural policies remain undefined at the European level” writes Céline Romainville.53
The scientific and social sciences fields have also come up with studies and classifications on the word Culture. Céline Romainville came up with five main dimensions of it, which are quite similar to five categories of culture described by Cris Shore in Building Europe. The first one is anthropological: it is the way a group has conscious of a common identity and feels like it belongs to one “historical community”.54 This theory goes a little bit against the multiculturalism thinker Welsh (aforementioned) who thinks that identity is fluid and that people can grow distant from it. Cris Shore also categorizes culture as anthropological. He thinks that this concept makes culture appear like a space, “central to which are issues of language and power, ideology and consciousness”.55 The second dimension of culture is linked to aesthetic creation and practices (literature, Arts, heritage and so on). Works of arts can obey to specific rules which can be associated in one culture (“A set of principles underlying the work of a particular artist or artistic movement”56) but they can also answer the core purpose of being aesthetic (“concerned with beauty or the appreciation of beauty”57). This dimension refers to the first category of culture by Cris Shore: “there is the narrow yet hegemonic definition which restricts culture to questions of art, the entertainment industries or the acquisition of learning”.58 This conception of culture seems to be broader, most used one by the Commission’s discourses. The third one is economic, or “corporate” and “organizational” culture as Cris Shore would qualify. Culture is a big factor of revenue, especially in a globalized world or a zone of free economic exchange such as the EU. In 2003, Culture had generated 654 billion euros of revenue (2.6% of the EU GDP) and employs around 6 million people. Cultural goods can be sold, bought, consumed: “the creative economy, which is known to encourage innovation, has had an
52 “Cultural Diversity | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization,” accessed March 9, 2017, http://www.unesco.org/new/en/social-and-human-sciences/themes/international-migration/glossary/cultural-diversity/.
53 Romainville, European Law and Cultural Policies. 54 Ibid., 12:21.
55 Shore Cris, Building Europe: The Cultural Politics of European Integration, 23.
56 “Aesthetic - Definition of Aesthetic in English | Oxford Dictionaries,” accessed July 31, 2017, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/aesthetic.
57 Ibid.
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important potential for employment and exports”.59 This dimensions also has its importance in the motivation from the EU to create cultural policies and manage the projects from the institutions. The fourth and last dimension by Céline Romainville is the social one: “it acts like ‘capital’ that transmits to social classes a set of behaviors that locate individuals in society”. This is similar of Bourdieu’s interpretation of culture: the social background gives a cultural space and shapes cultural behaviors. This social space reproduces the cultural capital of a person and determine his/her level of being more or less ‘cultivated’, despite the cultural mediation and accessibility of culture: “this research highlights new dominant cultural profiles that modulate the mechanisms of cultural distinction by outlining the separation between high a and low culture”.60 Of course, a generalized and equal access to culture regardless of one’s socio-economic background can always minimize and improve the social reproduction, which is what the EU has been trying to implement since Maastricht. But this action will require a solid policy and a clear line to achieve this goal. The last and fifth dimension of culture by Romainville is “democratic”.61 It is the norms, knowledge and shared representations by common actors from a same democratic regime: “it acts at the level of the socio-cultural conditions necessary for the establishment and functioning of a democracy”. Pascal Gielen also considers democracy as an important entity of the space of culture: “Democracy presupposes the ability and possibility for citizens to inform themselves, to reflect on values, to hold different opinions and negotiate about them.”62
As stated before, Pascal Gielen thinks that culture is socially shared, as a reference to the Belgian sociologist Rudi Laermans. His conception gives a relevant dimension to the way the EU behaves towards culture:
“Culture is all about assigning meaning and it tells us something about what we think is of value in life and how we view the world. […] Culture is not a collection of objects; it is shaped by the actions of people – by repetition, adaptation, actualization, interpretation and criticism – and is therefore continuously in development”. 63
59 Romainville, European Law and Cultural Policies, 12:24. 60 Ibid., 12:25.
61 Ibid., 12:26.
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In other words, culture enhances interactions and communication between people and encourage social cohesion. Maybe Culture is very much political after all, as it is “inseparable from power”64.
All these aspects and definitions of culture can be the object of a whole different study. However it is important to establish a scheme for the understanding of the EU policy when it mentions ‘culture’.
2.2 Culture in the political construction of the EU: the Treaties.
Cris Shore summarizes the EU’s emphasis on Culture into two main points: first, because Culture is a powerful economic sector that generates revenues and secondly because culture has been – and still is – a “key dimension of European Integration”.65
The official intervention of the EU in the cultural affairs did not appear until the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. The EU and its construction were created in Treaties and signed by all member States, each time more numerous. After long decades of modest decisions and actions in the cultural by the EU, the end of the 1980’s will bring a brand new era in the European history: the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 and the USSR collapsed shortly after. As Germany was reunited, new countries and democracies were born in Central and Eastern Europe. The European Community was thus facing new challenges and hopes, which drove the institutions to establish a brand new Treaty with greater goals for what will give birth to the European Union as we know it today. The EU was in the making, considering the new potential members who would gladly join a political movement for freedom, peace and economic prosperity. This momentum could only be an adequate environment for a reinforcement of a common European culture and identity. This is how the Maastricht Treaty was born and ratified in 1992.
Up until Maastricht, it was the Council of Europe who first conducted some cultural action at a European level. Although the word culture does not appear in the convention that gave birth to the Council of Europe after the London Treaty in 1949, this institution was concerned about culture as the congress of the Hague from 1948, which encourage the creation of the Council, was based on discussions around cultural issues. Therefore,
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a commission to Cultural Affairs was created among the Council’s Assembly at its creation.
Unlike its predecessors, the Maastricht Treaty introduces culture as a true community jurisdiction through its Article 128 (see in ANNEX 1).66 This first move with serves as a legal basis for the implementation of the future cultural programmes by the Commission and for the next Articles on culture (Article 151 from the Treaty of Amsterdam and 167 from the Treaty of Lisbon) which will not significantly change.
This Article creates a close link between State and Culture (first paragraph) while bringing up the “regional dimension” and “diversity”. This concern for the respect and promotion of the member’s cultural identity is however followed by a mention of the necessary common cultural heritage – to be promoted just as much as the national ones by the members. The article thus describes four main fields of actions: first, and most importantly, the cooperation between the member States. Then, the consideration of culture in the other sections of the Treaty, further cooperation with third countries and the intervention of the Community through specific measure for each actions taken by the member States.67 This marks a true change in the European policy, as from now on, the Council of Europe will stop being the institution ‘in charge’ for cultural matters. This new policy will open collaborations between the Council of Europe and other parties, as required by the third paragraph:
“The Community and the Member States shall foster cooperation with third countries and the competent international organizations in the sphere of culture, in particular the Council of Europe.” See Annex 1.
As Nicoleta Lasan writes in her publication on the Article 128, “it represents a break with the past as it transfers cultural cooperation from the intergovernmental arena into the supranational one”.68 The highest European Institutions are now taking over the decisions on Culture and its diffusion. It is a good thing for Culture as it implies more budget and projects but also a way for the EU to promote itself and create a European
66 Denuit, Politique Culturelle Européenne, 69. 67 Ibid., 71.
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sense of belonging through these funded projects. But revision of this first Article on Culture might also introduce more implicit governance from the EU through cultural policies.
It is the case for Article 151 from the Treaty of Amsterdam, which is a direct revision of its predecessor. It is the same one as the 128 indeed, with the following addition on its fourth paragraph, in italic: “The Community shall take cultural aspects into account in its action under other provisions of this Treaty, in particular in order to respect and to
promote the diversity of its cultures”.69 The EU reinforces the attention drawn to the cultural diversity of its members and its promotion. Encouraging the cooperation between member States and the use of the pronoun “their” in “their action” in the second paragraph put aside the Community for their benefice. The actions by the Community thus appear to be limited in the four activities the Article enumerates. The style is very broad to describe these activities, leaving the space to include a “wide range of cultural initiatives”.70 One of the impacts of this article would be that the cooperation between member States is a notion that is well integrated by the member states as it tends to be the projects with the best cohesion that receive Community funding. Of course, if culture itself is not the main factor for a project to to be selected for a funding, it will ultimately influence the type of projects that submit an application from 1999 on (“The fact that culture is not itself the primary object of such funds inevitably influences, however, the type of projects which receive grants”).71 Overall, these articles give the EU to power to promote and encourage cultural cooperation between the States but does not provide a “legal mandate to lead or control policies in the cultural sector”.72
The new specificity of the Lisbon Treaty (Annex 2), the one that introduced the Article of the TFUE, is that is erase the unanimity requirement at the Council for the new adoptions of recommendations and “Community” is replaced by “Union”.73
In short, all three Articles present the same rhetoric and open-ended terms. But they all put cultural diversity as a major concern of the European policy on culture. The
69 Craufurd Smith, Culture and European Union Law, 50. 70 Ibid., 51.
71 Ibid., 68.
32 diversity in the treaties refers to the cultural identity of the member States. But this
imprecision and lack of definition can also designate the diverse artistic activities and economic models.74
One can wonder what are the motivations behind the EU’s policy on culture, as stated in the Maastricht, Amsterdam and Lisbon Treaties. They are recent and remain quite unclear when it comes to defining the terms it uses as well as their objectives. There is actually no mention of sustainable practices and concrete goals and it leaves a lot of freedom for the member States and the institutions to create any type of cultural projects. When it actually comes to the cultural programmes (which have clear objectives and goals), what does the Commission look into to choose a project over another? Is Culture and cultural diversity the only purpose behind the funding of a project?
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Chapter 3: The European Union is an advocate for
Culture and the European cultural diversity.
3.1 Creation of cultural programmes: from Culture 2000 to Creative Europe. Whether the EU has an agenda or not, the recent policies on culture in the 1990’s and in 2007 gave birth to the cultural programmes launched by the Commission, which allowed thousands of projects and organizations to be funded and to have the merit to exist.
After the Article 151, the Commission had launched three cultural action programmes:
Kaleidoscope from 1996-1998 with 26.5 million of euros (programme designed for
cultural creation’s promotion and support of prjects with a European dimension), Ariane from 1997 to 1999 with 11.1 million of euros (support for the book industry and
Raphaël (assistance for the member States to protect and preserve European heritage)
from 1997 to 2000 with 30 million of euros.75
Replacing the punctual funding from before Maastricht to real programmes represented a real improvement. The decision of the Parliament and the Council of Europe from 1996 to create a programme which will support the European artistic and cultural activities was the very first one to be based on the Article 128 from the Maastricht Treaty. Thus, Kaleidoscope was born to encourage the creativity, events and exchanges between cultural networks in all artistic disciplines.76 The other two were launched not long after as the enthusiasm from the member States and the institutions grew more ideas for the future.
The European Commission organized for the first time in Brussels in January 1998 the Cultural Forum of the EU, which was a real success. This context gave the opportunity for the Council, the Parliament and the Commission to agree on a unique and bigger programme for the years 2000-2005. The fifteen member States were represented as well as more European countries and important figures from the cultural sector. A total
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of five priorities were agreed upon: the EU should, together with partners, brings its support to creators, maintain a genuine regulation for the cultural activities, develop the employability of the cultural sector, encourage the social asset of culture, etc. In this privileged context, the Commission established a unique funding tool for cultural cooperation, Culture 2000, for a length of five years with a budget of 167 million of euros. The main objectives of the programme were the promotion of the European common heritage and cultural diversities with Culture as an instrument for economic development and factor of social cohesion.77 45% of the budget would go to the innovative actions of at least three member States. These actions would target new forms of cultural expression, the improvement of culture accessibility to people in need… Actions taken within the field of cultural cooperation will get 35% of the budget. 10% would go to special events with a European dimension that are capable of reaching a significant amount of participants in order to foster the feeling of belonging to one common Union (for example the European Capital of Culture of the European Cultural Month would be one of these events). The remaining 10% will go to the promotion of each projects and events and the good dissemination of the information. Culture 2000 was then a large financial tool for what it was aiming to do: stimulating creativity and mobility, intercultural dialog, the circulation of the Arts, knowledge of the history of the European people.
Renaud Denuit enumerates the successes and the benefits for Culture 2000: for the first year of implementation, over 1000 applications were sent and 219 were selected for a grant (total of 32 million of euros). In 2002, 224 projects were funded in various fields: spectacle, cultural heritage, cinema, book industry, events. Of course, Culture 2000 was extended. Culture 2007-2013 was granted 408 millions of euros for the entire five years. The main line of the budget were redefined by the Commission which hierarchized the actions: 77% of the budget should go to the cultural actions, 10% to European cultural organizations, and 5% to the analysis study and dissemination effort of the projects.
After the economic crisis that touched Europe in 2008 stressed the need for a new strategy for employment and growth, which was launched by the European Commission in 2010: the EU-2020. This project is “a strategy to help Europe emerge stronger from
