Kick-off of the Béton Bleu essay series:

HOW STRATEGIC CULTURAL POLICY CAN FOSTER EUROPEAN INTEGRATION

The Covid-19 pandemic is plunging the cultural and creative scene in Europe into an existential crisis. This is the right moment for the European Union to act strategically - and invest in its cultural governance.

An essay by Ana-Marija Cvitic

The political integration of the European Union is a cultural process, it takes place in the everyday day life – or at least this is a well-known narrative in cultural anthropology. In that sense, political integration means constant negotiations concerning basic ethical and aesthetic concepts of taste, norms, and historical consciousness. What this "Europeanisation of Everyday Life" actually means for the individuals and their cultural identiy is highly debated, above all by the cultural and creative scene itself.

Europe probably has never debated the role of art and culture in society with such force as it has during the Covid19 pandemic. Is culture "systemically essential"? Should cultural institutions be accessible even in a lockdown? Or does the state rather link them to the entertainment industry and thus make culture dispensable in times of crisis, as it is happening now?

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 27 European member states found individual answers to these questions. States such as Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, or Denmark differentiated between the measures affecting the cultural sector during the second Covid19 wave. In many places, a visit to a museum remained possible even where restaurants and sports facilities had to close.

Cultural policy according to the principle of subsidiarity

The competence for cultural policy lies within the member states, this states the principle of subsidiarity. The institutions of the EU have only supplementary, supporting and coordinating competences. All hopes for help and support are pinned on the financial policy instruments of the EU: The spectrum of financial possibilities remains broad, varying between the expansion of the Creative Europe programme, the establishment of a "Cultural Deal for Europe" or another programme.

The cultural sector as an integral part of the European economy  

The cultural and creative sector is an essential economic force in the EU: According to Eurostat, the European sector employed in 2019 more than 7.4 million people in the 27 Member States. The culture and creative industries provide more than 3.7 per cent of all jobs in the EU and generated over €145 billion in turnover in 2017.

The narrative that Europe as a business location owes its success to the creative class, especially in urban regions, seems to be legitimate. In view of the development of the post-industrial society and digitalization, the importance of creative human potential will exponentially grow.

At the same time, the pandemic threatens the cultural and creative sector in its core: The majority of the sector is made up of self-employed people or small and medium-sized enterprises whose sources of income vary between public subsidies, private sponsors and patrons, audience-dependent income or copyright fees. Many of these structures fell away or threaten to fall away in the wake of the pandemic.

Creative Europe as a beacon of hope

Under the leadership of the Croatian EU Presidency in 2020, the European ministers of culture published a joint declaration in the first half of the year to pave the way for joint European support measures in the Corona crisis. The German Presidency continued this initiative, including negotiations on the Creative Europe programme.

Its outcome is surprising: According to a preliminary agreement between the heads of state and government, the EU Parliament and the European Commission, Creative Europe is to be given a budget of 2.2 billion euros for the period 2021 to 2027 – an increase of almost a third of the previous volume.

However, the programme's broad mandate dampens confidence in structural improvement: Creative Europe is intended to support cross-border cooperation, networking, and the creation of platforms in the cultural sector, the film and media industry, and international political cooperation, including European citizenship.

(By comparison, the streaming service provider Netflix invested more than 1.75 billion euros in European film production in 2018 alone).

Although Creative Europe remains an important instrument for European cultural policy, the question arises as to which other strategic measures would protect the meshwork of cultural networks from the brink of collapse. Without them, political intra-European integration will be slowed down. "You cannot fall in love with a single market", as founding father Jacques Delors once said. The EU institutions (Parliament, Commission and Council) should use the power they have and invest more in its community-building function: The creative sector.

Cultural policy is the glue in the European integration process

Art and culture are characteristically dedicated to highlight and clarify the complexity of the contemporary global world. They create spaces for reflection, open horizons, enliven debates. The turbulent state of European integration provides fertile ground for artistic debate: What happens when people with different horizons of experience meet? How do we influence and develop in the face of cultural diversity? What fears arise with regard to these changes? What does our everyday coexistence look like? Even if national borders continue to be the object of contention for people living in Europe, they are and will remain embedded in European contexts.

The cultural theorists Sebastian Büttner and Steffen Mau discuss this point in their essay “Horizontal Europeanisation and European Integration”: "The way we deal with other cultures and nations is changing, people are increasingly learning to tolerate and bridge differences, they are becoming more ‘capable of foreignness’. Notwithstanding all the conflicts, disappointments and fears associated with the European integration process, greater involvement in pan-European activities and relations can be a driver of universal and cosmopolitan attitudes."

What artists do with their intellectual cultural work is not only an economic added value; they create a necessary and supporting instrument for the development of a stable, peaceful Europe that functions on the basis of European civil societies. "There is no way to make the polity truly legitimate if it has no basis in an identity, because, as the old political writers used to say, no law and no norm, not even the most sophisticated, can truly live if it does not live in the souls of the citizens," writes Furio Cerutti in his volume of essays “Do Europeans Need an Identity. Political and Cultural Aspects”.

Making European politics tangible through culture

A forward-looking, strategic cultural policy of the European Union is thus the starting point for meeting global challenges, networking entrepreneurs and civil society, acquiring knowledge, and creating intercultural dialogue and cooperation. A strong artistic and cultural landscape is not the result of an economic and social revival in Europe, it is its condition! The European Union should make a conscious commitment to this – with the expansion of Creative Europe, with a commitment to a Cultural Deal or a completely different instrument. After all, there shouldn’t be limits to creative imagination.

Ana-Marija Cvitic is the Founder & Editor-In-Chief of Béton Bleu. This text was previously published on www.polis180.org/polisblog