Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-04-21-Speech-3-334"
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"en.20040421.14.3-334"2
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Mr President, Commissioner, the Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sport has the honour to submit for debate, and then to a vote here in this House, a report about which there has been much discussion. It brings to a temporary conclusion an adventure which has been somewhat unhappy. It is a report on which your rapporteur is in the minority, so all I can do is to tell you its history. This is the first time, in the two and a half years during which I have been fortunate enough to work with Mrs Reding, that I find myself in disagreement with her – friendly disagreement, but very clear disagreement nevertheless. She is well aware of this. She has even alluded to it briefly.
Anxious to keep the peace amongst us, and my personal friendship with Mrs Reding, I had proposed, and the Socialist Group had agreed with me, to accept our defeat at the committee stage and to decide not to put forward our amendments at the plenary session. After all, my mother brought me up properly and I am still a polite boy. However, our Green friends took up these amendments again, as is their right. You are therefore faced with two sets of amendments which are entirely incompatible. First of all there are the amendments of Socialist origin, though now supported by the Greens. These amendments are aimed at going back to the old system and to committing ourselves for the future only as far as 2010, reserving the right of the next Parliament to ask the Commission to propose, in autumn, a new list of Member States including the new ones, and to order those who can to organise a broad competition between cities, so that after some candidates have been eliminated the final decision is left to the jury of experts, which needs to be given that role if it is to be of any use, and to the European institutions.
The other set of amendments, which comes mainly from the PPE Group, validates and sets out in detail the Commission’s proposal which, in my opinion, makes any decision this coming autumn completely pointless. This set of amendments, however, requires that those Member States which are able to should propose several cities – and, Mrs Pack, you have just heard that there will be no question of this, because Mrs Reding will be obliged, by the constraints under which she is suffering, to deny you this. This set of amendments claims to encourage competition between cities but it does not explain how, because it does not deal with the problem of the numerous smaller Member States which have only one important city, which would call for a revision of the list of Member States, which is something which will have to be done in the autumn. This opening up of the competition, however, has now been refused.
There you have it, Mr President: Members will vote according to their conscience. Once again, I would like to say that the Commissioner, Mrs Reding, is not as much to blame as the Council of Ministers, which is stifling the emergence of any truly European spirit and imposing a system whereby Member States set out their stalls displaying their national heritage and talents, while at the same time resolutely denying the authority of this Parliament. Faced with this situation, I have a feeling of relative sadness, but of course I am speaking as the defeated party.
The idea that every year one city in Europe should be the European Capital of Culture is an idea that originated with Melina Mercouri in 1985. At first, Mr President, that idea had a brilliant future, at a time when fierce competition brought together a number of candidate cities in a contest to win a single designation, and when a jury of experts gave its verdict on the real European interests of each of the plans of the candidate cities.
In 1999, the unfortunate Decision 1419 was proposed by the Council, supported by the Commission and approved by Parliament, and it governs, until 2019, as Mrs Reding has just reminded us, the list of Member States which, at the rate of just one per year, are responsible for proposing the European Capital of Culture. First of all, that decision takes no account of the fact that, even at the time, there was a prospect of the possible accession of at least ten new Member States, and the fact that it did not do so is unacceptable. Secondly, it left itself open to criticism, if not scandal, in both legal and political terms, since it practically prohibits the European Parliament in the next two legislative periods, i.e. those beginning in 1999 and 2004, from exercising, for five years, its powers to contribute towards the annual choice of the European Capital of Culture.
Finally – and this is at least as serious – although some Member States have submitted to the European institutions and the jury a list of two or three cities, thereby enabling a real choice to be made between them on the basis of the dynamism, innovation and European dimension of the projects, not all have done so. Member States’ recent choices have often related to a single city, chosen for reasons concerned with the local-election policies of the government currently in power, and without the city in question having shown any real interest in assuming this role. This amounts to forced labour, all the more so since assistance from the European budget for these activities represents less than 5% of the expenditure that they involve.
What we need to do, Mr President, is to start again from scratch. At the beginning of this debate, several months ago, my committee agreed unanimously with that. Mrs Reding was aware of it too, and she knows it is true as well as I do, even though she has just told us again that this will be something for a second stage, in the autumn.
The evidence shows that we need to revise the list and change the order after 2008, because it
possible, Commissioner, contrary to what you have just said, to integrate new Member States, provided that those Member States already designated for the years after 2009 would agree to a little delay. It was perfectly possible and it was very simple because, Mr President, it is essential to realise that a city needs five years in order to prepare itself. Obviously, therefore, it would be necessary to revise the list, change the order after 2008, reintroduce competition between cities and reinstate the importance of the role of the jury which, when there is only one ‘Capital’, obviously has no role at all and is no use for anything any more. It has, moreover, said as much, in writing, with delightful diplomatic acidity.
However, the Council was watching and the Commission did not dare to confront it. Therefore you now have a proposal for a decision which I would describe as astounding and which consists of deciding that, with effect from 2009 and up to 2019, there will be two European Capitals of Culture per year – one in a current Member State and one in a new Member State – and it will still be the Member States who will designate the candidate cities, without their being under any obligation to submit alternative choices to the European institutions. Mrs Reding will even refuse an amendment by the PPE-DE Group, despite the fact that it was pushing in that direction. To choose two European Capitals of Culture a year at a time when the procedure is almost stifled is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing. We shall simply make the dilution and obsolescence even worse. The jury still has no significance and the next two Parliaments are not allowed to participate in the selection process.
The Commission’s promise to submit to us, in autumn, a new draft decision amending this system, is merely a decoy. If we adopt this draft now, Commissioner, I do not see how, in autumn, we can go back on the date of 2019, the order in which Member States are listed and, above all, the fact that two capitals a year will be designated, leaving that task to the two Member States in question. I believe, moreover, that you will not be able to get the directive you have announced adopted, because you have become tangled up in the main substance of the problem. That is my prediction.
However, the Council is watching and it has been using intimidation. The three Member States involved in the crucial period of 2009 to 2011, which are Austria, Germany and Finland, have been afraid that their designation will be called into question, though no one was actually thinking of this. The PPE Group has been taken in hand. We are faced with a decision which serves the prestige interests of our Member States, but surely not those of Europe, which would have been to revitalise and give back the sparkle to what was an excellent procedure."@en1
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