Brussels, 14/02/2007 (Agence Europe) - After making good headway on television without frontiers on Monday (see related article), EU Culture and Media Ministers, meeting in Berlin on 12-13 February, considered the problem of how to support and develop cultural industries.
Ministers agreed on a series of proposals presented Minister of State for Culture and the Media Berndt Neumann, who chaired the meeting, for a future strategy on cultural industries in the coming years. He stressed that his colleagues were “called upon to agree on a common strategy for developing cultural industries, which are a significant engine of growth in Europe”. He noted that “Cultural industries already employ more people than the automobile industry and are growing twice as fast as the rest of the economy”. European Education, Training, Culture and Youth Commissioner Ján Figel' said the Commission planned to adopt a communication on culture “in the next few weeks”. This communication, he said, was “intended to underscore the economic significance of culture in achieving the aims of the Lisbon Agenda and to locate it within a larger strategy describing the multi-faceted contribution of culture to the programme of European integration”. (oj)