Brussels, 15/11/2005 (Agence Europe) - EU culture ministers reached a consensus on Monday afternoon on the “Culture 2007” programme which has three main objectives: the promotion of transnational mobility of cultural operators, encouragement for the transnational circulation of cultural works and products, and the promotion of intercultural dialogue. The programme provides for intervention at three levels: - direct funding of cultural actions, support for bodies at European level in the cultural sector, and support for the collection and dissemination of information and for other activities aimed at improving the impact of cultural cooperation projects. Regarding the submission of project selection to comitology procedure, the European Commission remains opposed to close involvement by Member States in the process, considering that any over-intrusiveness on their part could be detrimental to simplification, while Member States hope to take part in the procedure more closely, the British Presidency noted. The Presidency has therefore recommended that Member States only intervene for major projects (over EUR 200,000), but the Commission was unable to accept this compromise as, as Jan Figel explained, the intervention of Member States could cause the procedure to become bogged down without giving any substantial added value (the EUR 200,000 threshold concerns most projects, he stressed). Germany expressed some reservation about the definition of a “cultural industry” and Georg Boomgaarden spoke of legal insecurity. “Culture 2007” is described as an auxiliary to culture but it in no way aims to help any industrial sector, he said, therefore calling for the notion of “cultural industry” to be abolished, a proposal that was accepted by the Presidency and to which the other delegations were not opposed.
Ministers also held a discussion on changes to the process for selecting the European Culture Capital for 2007-2015, in order to integrate the new Member States. They formally designated Linz (Austria) and Vilnius (Lithuania) as European Culture Capitals for 2009, Lithuania thus becoming the first of the new Member States to be invited to take part in this cultural event.
The “Culture” Council came to a close with an exchange of views on the creation of digital libraries, a discussion that comes within the context of the recent communication from the European Commission, “i2010”, with a view to Council's adoption of a recommendation end 2006/early 2007. Ministers spoke of the timeliness of creating a European digital library in order to make the cultural content of Member States more accessible to citizens in a multicultural and multilingual on-line environment. All Member States showed a great interest in this initiative and pushed for its implementation. Ms Jowell was delighted about this. Commissioner Reding was “pleasantly surprised” to see the efforts already made by Member States to digitalise their archives and the total support given to the networking of their library collections, according to a single standardised process. “I am pleased to see that all countries are moving in the same direction”, she commented.