Brussels, 17/05/2006 (Agence Europe) - The Education, Culture and Audiovisual Council of 18 and 19 May will be chaired by Austrian Ministers Franz Morak, for “culture-audiovisual” issues and Elisabeth Gehrer, for “education”.
The session will begin on Thursday afternoon with the “culture-audiovisual” section. The main point will be the political agreement Ministers are expected to reach on three programmes for 2007-2013: Culture 2007, Media 2007 and Citizens for Europe. Partial agreement was reached at the Council of 14-15 November 2005, no decision having been taken, at the time, on the 2007-2013 financial perspective. This time, Ministers will adopt a definitive position, which will then be sent for second reading to the European Parliament. They are also expected to adopt a political agreement on a draft recommendation on the protection of minors and human dignity, and on the right of reply in the information services and audiovisual industries. Based on the 24 September 1998 recommendation, this proposal seeks to respond to the challenges posed by new technologies and the development of the sector (illegal content). The conclusions will be sent to the Parliament for second reading. The Council will also adopt a decision on the Cultural Diversity Charter, approved by Unesco on 20 October 2005, to allow the adoption of the Charter by the EU as a whole. In addition, Ministers will consider the draft decision to make 2008 the European Year of Inter-cultural Dialogue: Parliament has already given its opinion on the first reading (co-decision procedure). Finally, the Council will note the candidacies of Thomas Angyan (Austria) and Septo Kimanen (Finland) as members of the selection panel for the European 2012 capital of culture. These candidacies are expected to be officially endorsed in the second half of the year. The “audiovisual” section will contain only one point: an exchange of views on the “television without borders” directive: Ministers will discuss the European Commission's suggestions in order to draw up a progress report.
Friday will be devoted to “education” issues. The Council is expected to adopt conclusions on the linguistic competence indicator following the Commission's communication: Ministers held an exploratory debate on this issue on 23 February, but one point remained to be decided - the ideal age to test pupils (some thought 15, others thought 17). Key competences for life-long learning, which also were discussed in February, will be debated once again: the Council accepted the need to confirm the eight key competences set out by the Commission to allow people to operate comfortably in a knowledge-based society. There will then be a general debate on the draft recommendation on the European Quality Charter for Mobility, which seeks to increase mobility for education and training. Ministers will then exchange views on the integrated programme for life-long learning, in the light of the outcome of negotiations on the 2007-2013 budget. They will give their opinion on how to share this budget (6,970 million euro) among the four sub-programmes (Comenius, Erasmus, Leonardo de Vinci and Grundtvig). The session will end with a debate on the importance of education for the renewed sustainable development strategy: in December, the Council noted the Commission's communication seeking to renew this strategy for the next five years.