Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-11-15-Speech-2-763-000"
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"en.20111115.36.2-763-000"2
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"Madam President, the idea for the European Heritage Label was initially tabled in 2005 as a transnational initiative designed to highlight sites connected with European history, the creation and role of the European Union, and the values on which it was founded.
We amended the frequency of selection by States from every year to every two years, added one member to the panel of experts, so that the Committee of the Regions would be represented during selection and designation and, finally, we managed to postpone the widening of the scope of the action to other countries until after its first evaluation, because we felt that we wanted the European Heritage Label to become a well-established action which could then be used beyond the borders of the European Union and the European continent as an instrument for peaceful foreign policy.
We supported the acceptance of thematic sites in order to encourage cooperation at national, regional and transnational level, using networking as the instrument and again setting maximum possible cohesion at European level as the objective.
I am basically satisfied with the Council’s first reading, because it incorporated most of my amendments and changes. Even if we have a number of objections on certain points, we consider the final text to be very important and we believe that the European Heritage Label may heal our dented and damaged European cohesion, especially in these times.
In that particular form, the European Heritage Label has been awarded to date to 64 sites in Member States of the European Union and Switzerland. These sites reflect a broad spectrum of symbolic concepts illustrating intangible values and material cultural monuments to our common European civilisation.
In November 2008, the European Council expressed the intention of making the label an official EU action. Under the Treaty of Lisbon, the adoption of the European Heritage Label, in its European form, would be completed under the codecision procedure.
The European Commission text was communicated to the European Parliament in March 2010. A few days later, I was appointed to draft the relevant report, which was adopted by a large majority here in Strasbourg a year ago, marking the start last December of negotiations with the other European institutions to create the final legislative framework.
The result of this long but very constructive process, which was supported by excellent cooperation on the part of the Commission and Council representatives and clear guidance from the chair of the Committee on Culture and Education and, of course, excellent cooperation with the other shadow rapporteurs, is the legislative act that will be put to the vote tomorrow.
Once again, I should like, as I stand here, to thank everyone who participated in this joint effort to create a broadly targeted label based on clear-cut criteria, a more rational approach and, most importantly, continuous evaluation compared with the previous transnational label. This conversion from an intergovernmental procedure to a European action was no easy task. We needed to deal with the old label respectfully, but critically, in order to give due weight to the new label, to ensure its viability, and to guarantee clear criteria, transparent selection procedures and its regular application.
We started by accepting the symbolism of this action as the most important criterion; in other words, the sites to be labelled would be selected not for their beauty, but as three-dimensional reflections of the ideas and values on which European civilisation is based and the European Union was created. Our basic requirement was the educational value of the sites labelled to the young generation, the networking of sites and their attraction to tourists.
The main issues that concerned us were: a possible change of name, so that it clearly declared its identity as an EU action; unfortunately, this was not accepted by the Committee on Culture at the initial stage and the name of the old intergovernmental label was therefore retained. However, we made important changes to the Commission text and here I owe a great deal to my colleagues in the Committee on Culture and to the constant exchange of views with the Commission and Council representatives at the two official meetings and in numerous informal meetings held in support of the codecision procedure.
Firstly, we secured the participation of the European Parliament on an equal footing in the panel of experts which was set up. Secondly, the European Parliament was kept informed by the European Commission at every stage of the procedure to apply this action. Thirdly, there will be complete transparency at all stages of the action, from the initial selection at national level, with the facility for Member States to contest selections that affect vital priorities and the facility to withdraw the label from sites that no longer meet the criteria for the label."@en1
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