Brussels, 10/12/2008 (Agence Europe) - The selection panel responsible for assessing the candidate cities for the “European Capital of Culture 2014” title met in Stockholm on 8-9 December for pre-selection of cities in this member state. The two cities short-listed in Sweden are Lund and Umea. On 15-16 December, the panel will meet in Latvia for the same pre-selection purposes as Latvia has also been chosen to mark this event in 2014. There are four candidate cities in Latvia: Riga, Cesis, Jurmala and Liepaja. After Liverpool (UK) and Stavanger (Norway) this year, the future European Capitals of Culture will be Linz (Austria) and Vilnius (Lithuania) in 2009 and, in 2010 Essen (Germany), Pécs (Hungary) and Istanbul (Turkey). The cities pre-selected by the panel will have to complete their application by the end of summer 2009. (I.L./transl.jl)