Brussels, 21/11/2014 (Agence Europe) - The next session of the Education, Youth, Culture and Sport Council will be held in Brussels on Tuesday 25 November and will concern only the culture, audiovisual and sport planks. The potential of, firstly, the cultural and creative sectors and, secondly, of sport to support economic growth and job creation will be highlighted.
For cultural and audiovisual matters, the Council is to adopt three series of conclusions.
The first of these establishes a working plan in favour of culture (2015-2018), a strategic document laying down the priorities for European cooperation in creating cultural policies for the next four years. It includes four sectorial priorities: access to culture, cultural heritage, the creative economy and innovation and culture in the external relations of the EU, joined for the first time by two cross-cutting priorities (moving to digital and statistics). The strategies are based around the strategy EUROPE 2020. Since 2002, the Council has used working plans for culture as strategic tools to define the priority areas in which it believes work should be carried out at expert level over the next few years. In May, the Greek Presidency held a debate on the current working plan, which shed light on the priorities the member states wish to see tackled.
The second series of conclusions concerns participative governance in cultural heritage, which promotes the more active involvement of the private sector and representatives of civil society in the approach to the governance of cultural heritage. This approach will help to raise public awareness of cultural heritage, reinforce transparency and the obligation of accountability as regards the use of public resources and will also increase confidence between the citizens and the public authorities.
Lastly, in the framework of a public debate, the ministers will examine the contribution of the cultural and creative sectors to the achievement of the objectives of the strategy EUROPE 2020. The results of these discussions will feed into a summary report, to be presented to the European Council of 18 and 19 December.
The third series of conclusions relates to audiovisual policy in the digital age. They relate to the new audiovisual landscape, access to funding, private funding, media and cinematographic training and the revision of the directive on audiovisual media services and the modernisation of the EU framework in the field of copyright, which is to be announced in 2015.
Sport. The session given over to sport will take place on Tuesday afternoon, following a lunch of the ministers with representatives of sports movements. The Council is expected to adopt conclusions on sport as a factor in innovation and economic growth, stressing the positive potential effects of research and innovation in the field of sport on other sectors. The Council will also reiterate the potential of sport in terms of job creation.
The working day will end with a public debate on how to promote sports and physical activities among school-age children. (IL)