Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-02-02-Speech-3-158"
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"en.20000202.12.3-158"2
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"Madam President, as we have heard, all the groups have a common political enemy in the Council. It is not by chance that the Committee on Culture’s decisions are constantly ending up in the conciliation procedure, for one or other Member State in the Council always holds culture hostage to other interests. In this way, the unanimity principle has shown itself to be a blockading instrument of the first order. The battle for a workable compromise lasted almost two years, and now, at long last, the European Parliament can give the go-ahead. The Council could not be moved, not even when the precursor programmes Kaleidoscope, Ariane and Raphael finished. A pilot programme was called for to bridge the gap. This showed up the weaknesses of the European Union’s cultural policy activities once again.
The political fight over funding and programme structuring is out of all proportion to the volume of support. Out of 410 applications in 1999 only 55 projects with a low overall volume of EUR 6.07 million could be considered. The Council was not prepared in the case of this particular programme to accommodate Parliament to the tune of even a single euro! And so the moderate sum of 167 million will stand until 2004. That is the same as a single, medium-sized, German opera house’s expenditure over the same period, when here in Europe this sum has been earmarked for 29 countries over a period of five years! There is a blatant discrepancy here!
And so we are going to have to be content, albeit very grudgingly, with the fact that we have at least managed to achieve something in terms of content. Previous speakers have already kindly pointed this out. We can only hope that it will, after all, be possible to persuade the Council to have a change of heart one day. Perhaps the Council will come to understand that cultural activities do the European Union good, not harm! Cultural cooperation – and this was also mentioned earlier – truly creates identity, far more so than any transport directive, however important it might be. Providing support for culture meets with wide-spread acceptance, and this certainly cannot be said of all policy decisions. What, may I ask, is the Council afraid of?"@en1
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