Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-02-02-Speech-3-161"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20000202.12.3-161"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, we have now come to the end of a long road. Following the conciliation stage, our institutions can now formally adopt the new ‘Culture 2000’ framework programme. We shall thus, in the course of the next five years, have a tool perfectly suited to developing clear, well-structured and, I am sure, successful measures in order to promote the cultural sector. It is with great satisfaction that I today welcome this ‘happy ending’ in this House, and I thank you for it. I wish to thank everyone in this Parliament who worked to achieve this successful outcome to the conciliation process.
The new programme will, I am sure, in terms of its structure and organisation based on transparency, efficiency and balance, prove to be an instrument as successful as it is essential to our measures.
Madam President, I reiterate my thanks to Parliament for its support and for, once again, having shown the importance it attaches to culture in the context of the Union. I am certain that it will not be disappointed, having given us its support, and I personally undertake to keep Parliament informed, as things progress, of the various phases of the implementation of our measures and the measures of our citizens, which I hope will be great measures for the future of the Union.
I should like to express especial thanks to the Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sport, particularly to its rapporteur, Mr Graça Moura, its chairman, Mr Gargani, the European Parliament delegation and the leaders of the political groups, the Conciliation Committee and its chairman, Mr Imbeni. They all made a vital constructive and balanced contribution. Throughout the negotiations, they were of great help and it must be said that the difficult and occasionally tiresome negotiations were nonetheless completed in record time.
We now have a framework programme, the first of its type for the cultural sector, and this programme makes it possible for us to plan our action from a new perspective and to work to promote culture in a more comprehensive, but also more thorough and detailed manner.
I would like to express my delight, with you, at this pleasing outcome. In spite of a budget situation which does not match up to our ambitions, these results will now enable us to approach the future positively and I would like to pick up on what Mr Gargani has just said, that the Commission made a statement regarding a mid-term assessment. It stated that on the occasion of the report it must draw up in accordance with Article 7 of the European Parliament and Council decision, it would carry out an assessment of the results of the programme, and this assessment will also cover the financial resources in the context of the Community financial perspectives. If need be, the report shall contain a proposal to amend the decision, and this should be achieved by 30 June 2002.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a formal commitment, not just words on paper. All this must lead us to intensify our action in favour of developing a common cultural area, within which our cultures can flourish further in all their unique features, in all their diversity, but may also be mutually enriched and the other citizens of Europe may participate fully in them. It is thanks, too, to Parliament’s action, preferring a number of small-scale measures to be carried out close to the citizens’ cultural roots rather than vast measures on a spectacular scale. This is going to lead us to make ‘Culture 2000’ the programme of the citizen.
The increased participation of our citizens is something I hope and pray for. I would like this participation to be as extensive and productive as possible and I undertake to work to ensure that in the course of the five years covered by the programme it becomes a tangible reality. I know that you, as Members of Parliament, in your own regions and countries, are all going to work together with the programme participants so that all these small flowers, as one Member of Parliament said, go to make a vast multicoloured carpet.
I should like this programme to become a practical reality and for culture to be not only a factor of enrichment for our citizens, both in personal as well as in social and economic terms, but a right which it is our job to assert, and also the hallmark of rediscovered interaction within the Union. This is what our European ‘Culture 2000’ programme offers. It does not compete with the cultural policies implemented in the various Member States. Such policies are necessary, and I would like to see them developed further. It simply adds to them, complements them, building a bridge between the various cultures of our various countries.
I feel therefore that extending and enriching European citizens’ participation in culture is a crucial task, one which justifies the efforts we make to achieve it, and this is the yardstick against which we must measure the success of our programme and of our Union. A number of Members of Parliament have quite rightly raised this point. If the Union is purely an economic union, then it is a stillborn project. However, if it is a union of culture, civilisation and participation, then it becomes a living thing.
This is the foundation, ladies and gentlemen, which I intend to develop, and I shall take the following five areas into special consideration: firstly, providing creative people with opportunities of an innovative nature to allow their talent to find the support it deserves in our programme. Secondly, encouraging exchanges, mobility and training in the cultural sector. Thirdly, promoting cooperation between cultural operators. Fourthly, increasing audiences for culture, with particular emphasis on attracting young people to culture and, fifthly, protecting the common cultural heritage on the European scale as well as the history of the peoples of Europe, and making them better known."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples