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31 March 1995
Doc. 7272
REPORT on enlargement and European cultural co-operation
(Rapporteur: Mrs FISCHER, Germany, Group of the European People's Party)
Summary
The report marks the fortieth anniversary of the European Cultural Convention which is now the basis of co-operation between forty-three European countries in the fields of culture, education, heritage, youth and sport. Media co-operation has also been virtually extended to the whole of Europe.
The same geographical limits are suggested for this cultural co-operation as have been proposed for membership of the Council of Europe. On the other hand ways should be found of associating interested non-European states such as Canada and Israel.
The recent enlargement to central and eastern Europe has not only almost doubled the area of co-operation, but the nature of co-operation has changed to include also assistance. The Vienna Summit added a political objective of creating a cohesive yet diverse Europe. Unfortunately, however, available financial and human resources have not kept pace with this enlargement and the credibility of the Council of Europe's work in these areas at both intergovernmental and parliamentary levels is being seriously questioned.
I. Draft recommendation
1. The European Cultural Convention of 1954 has proved its importance as a primary instrument of cultural co-operation in the Council of Europe. It is now the basis of co-operation between forty-three countries in the fields of culture, heritage, education, youth and sport.
2. The Assembly, which has throughout stressed the significance of this activity, appreciates the considerable assistance that Council of Europe member states have given and are continuing to give to convention activities involving non-member states.
3. The Assembly also congratulates the Council of Europe secretariat for managing to carry out the ambitious range of activities involved with a minimum of financial and human resources.
4. This work-load has considerably increased with enlargement of cultural co-operation since 1989 to include most of Europe. To multilateral co-operation has been added assistance and training. This inevitably calls for greater resources; enlargement should in no way be used as a means of reducing contributions by individual member states.
5. The Assembly therefore asks the Committee of Ministers to ensure that the cuts in the grant-in-aid to the Cultural and Sports Funds in 1994 and 1995 are made up in 1996 and that the programme for the new European Youth Centre in Budapest is fully funded.
6. The main area of concern is the level of secretariat staffing, which has not increased in step with the new needs of enlargement. The Committee of Ministers should give priority to increasing staffing in areas that are already dealing with the greater Europe.
7. The possibility of enlargement to the whole continent has marked the renaissance of Europe. The step to cultural co-operation on this level is a significant political step in the development of countries only now emerging from totalitarianism and should not be rushed by over-hasty aspirations to immediate political maturity and therefore full membership.
8. Obstacles should be removed for the remaining European states that wish to enter into cultural co-operation. The Assembly has already stated in Recommendation 1239 (1994) that all the republics of the former Yugoslavia should be readmitted to the Cultural Convention.
9. The Assembly suggests that accession to the convention be limited to the same geographical area of Europe as has been proposed for the enlargement of membership of the Council of Europe in Recommendation 1247 (1994). It believes however that the process of European cultural co-operation should operate in as open a manner as is practicable, and calls therefore on the Committee of Ministers to consider in a positive manner requests from non-European states to be associated with the convention, their association being conditional on mutual interest, as in the present cases of Canada and Israel, and on the payment of a reasonable financial contribution.
10. The Committee of Ministers is asked to consider altering the statute of the European Youth Foundation to bring membership into line with the European Cultural Convention as has already been done with the revised statute of the European Youth Centre.
11. The Assembly welcomes the virtual extension of media co-operation to all states party to the European Cultural Convention and would suggest that the Committee of Ministers reinforces the pan-European approach to activities in this field.
12. The Assembly is very conscious that with the extension of activities and enlargement its own contribution to European cultural co-operation has been severely limited by human and financial resources at both parliamentary and secretariat levels. It calls on the Committee of Ministers to provide the necessary logistical support.
II. Explanatory memorandum
by Mrs FISCHER
Introduction
1. The present report is the Assembly's contribution to marking the fortieth anniversary of the European Cultural Convention (signed Paris November 1954). It will not however take the form of a celebration of past achievements but will rather review the critical state in which this co-operation is now placed in the Council of Europe.
2. With the enlargement of cultural co-operation to central and eastern Europe, a vigorous revival is needed on both intergovernmental and parliamentary sides if the Council of Europe is to continue to play a worthwhile role.
3. The development of European cultural co-operation has been well documented by earlier Assembly reports. It is recalled here in appendices. This report will concentrate on certain political and practical aspects.
The content of European cultural co-operation
4. The Vienna Summit (October 1993) declared: "Cultural co-operation, in which the Council of Europe is a prime instrument — through education, the media, cultural action, the protection and enhancement of the cultural heritage and participation of young people — is essential for creating a cohesive yet diverse Europe". This is confirmation of the broader definition of the content of cultural co-operation (including the media, heritage and youth sectors) that the Assembly (Committee on Culture and Education) has for long maintained (and recently reasserted in Recommendation 1216 (1994)).
5. In principle cultural co-operation in certain fields is limited to the member states of the Council of Europe rather than the potentially wider audience of states signatory to the European Cultural Convention. Thus in the field of the media, while cinema and cultural aspects of communication are covered within the Council for Cultural Co-operation (CDCC), most other activities are carried out by the Steering Committee on the Mass Media (CDMM) where membership is in principle limited to Council of Europe member states. In practice however with observer status extended to most of the states party to the Cultural Convention, most of the CDMM's work is now carried out in a pan-European framework. Moreover non-member states of the Council of Europe which are party to the Cultural Convention and enjoy observer status on the CDMM participate in the European ministerial conferences on the media as full members. The Assembly can welcome this virtual extension of media co-operation to all Cultural Convention states.
6. We should also press for the extension of the European Youth Foundation (EYF) to all Cultural Convention states. The EYF helps finance multilateral youth activities outside the European Youth Centres (EYC) of Strasbourg and Budapest.
7. The question arises also for other Partial Agreements, such as Eurimages, Youth Card, the European Centre for Modern Languages, the European Audiovisual Observatory, or the Centre for Global Interdependence and Solidarity. In principle these are as open-ended as the European Cultural Convention.
The aims of European cultural co-operation
8. The Vienna Declaration reaffirmed, in the passage quoted above, the instrumental value of cultural co-operation — that is, as a means to a political end. This has been debated in the Council of Europe from its very beginning in 1949. Rather as the options of unity or union were left open in the statute (English or French), whether cultural co-operation should be an end in itself or a means to a political end was the main point of controversy in the first cultural debate in the Assembly on 6 September 1949. Since the establishment of cultural co-operation on the basis of the European Cultural Convention the possibility has existed of wider membership than the Council of Europe. Thus Spain was able to sign the convention in 1957 and Finland in 1970 without political opposition. Though the Assembly has tended to prefer to see cultural co-operation as an end in itself and encourage its being open to states which might not be able to be accepted into full political co-operation, the issue has remained alive in the Committee on Culture and Education. In Recommendation 1216 we tried to find a means of accommodating both positions (July 1993 — and see further in Mrs Hawlicek's report, Doc. 6850, paragraphs 21-26).
9. We should nevertheless continue to press for the re-establishment of cultural co-operation with all the republics of the former Yugoslavia. This was stated in Recommendation 1239 (and in my question to the Chairman-in-Office of the Committee of Ministers on 5 October 1994). So far only Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina have been enabled to accede to the convention (signed in 1987 by Yugoslavia, ironically the first of the states of central and eastern Europe to do so). The United Nations has raised the embargo against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) and on this basis the Committee on Culture and Education has gone ahead with a fact-finding mission in the museum field and I agreed to lead an Assembly delegation to Belgrade in April 1995. The case in favour of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia remains.
10. The relatively sophisticated system of multilateral co-operation and debate that developed since 1949 and 1954 has in the last few years been significantly modified. First by the enlargement of European cultural co-operation to central and eastern Europe — to which Russia adds a further quantum leap. And second by the emergence of armed conflict within Europe — in the first instance in the former Yugoslavia. The need for assistance has been introduced as a very real priority in certain areas alongside what has become increasingly uneven co-operation.
Enlargement and the limits of European cultural co-operation
11. Enlargement of cultural co-operation (and of the number of states signatory to the European Cultural Convention) has been parallelled by enlargement of parliamentary co-operation in the Assembly (through the granting of special guest status since 1989) and enlargement of the Council of Europe itself (see Appendix D) . These processes should be distinguished, even if they are in several ways related, because each step is significant and the nature of co-operation different.
12. It is important to recognise that Russia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, to take the most obvious examples, have the same official status in cultural co-operation as France or Germany.
13. This is meant as a positive observation. I mentioned it in my statement in the Assembly debate on enlargement on 4 October 1994 although it was otherwise largely overlooked by other speakers in that debate as also that on Russian membership in January 1995. It depends on the distinction drawn above between cultural co-operation (Cultural Convention) and political co-operation (Statute of the Council of Europe).
14. The limits to European cultural co-operation, to European culture and to Europe should also be distinguished. Despite the emphasis placed on culture in the definition of the Europe of the Council of Europe in Recommendation 1247, it is essentially the accepted geographical definition that is being proposed in that recommendation. European culture, as other cultures, has of course spread throughout the world and is not confined to the geographical Europe. Moreover one feature of the geographical Europe is its multicultural nature (and this is more than a matter of only European cultures).
15. The limits to European cultural co-operation are not necessarily the same as applied to political co-operation in the Council of Europe. But if not, what other limits might apply?
16. Requests have recently been made by Canada to participate in the activities of the CDCC in the fields of culture and the cultural heritage and by Israel to have observer status in the CDCC and the Steering Committee for the Development of Sport (CDDS). After agreement had been reached in the CDCC Bureau in November 1994, these requests are now under consideration by the Committee of Ministers.
17. The Assembly has accepted Israel as an observer since 1957; its historical and cultural relevance is evident. Canada has been part of the CSCE (Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe) (now OSCE); its history and culture is also closely tied in with that of Europe; along with Japan and other OECD states it has already a practice of parliamentary co-operation with the Assembly.
18. But the OSCE is not a valid criterion as OSCE countries are not necessarily European but are rather interested in Europe. The distance of certain of them was underlined at the education seminar organised by the Council of Europe for all CSCE participating states in December 1993. Once cultural co-operation is opened on such lines there would appear to be no way of avoiding its extension to the greater part of the world. The United States of America is part of the OSCE; the Commonwealth is linked to the United Kingdom; Latin America has close cultural ties with the Iberian peninsula, etc.
19. A more reasonable institutional argument would be recognition of the Unesco regional group which includes Israel and Canada but also the United States of America. Such a group must in any case be recognised in development of joint conventions and networks with Unesco in the higher education field.
20. Undeniably the most practical solution here would be to apply the same geographical limits to cultural co-operation in Europe as for political co-operation (Recommendation 1247), while seeking ways of associating interested non-European countries in co-operation under the convention. This is the position set out in Recommendation 1216. Failing criteria for distinguishing between them, we can only suggest that similar status be accorded to both Canada and Israel. We would like to see as open as possible a policy of cultural co-operation, but we recognise also the practical constraints of financial and human resources.
The problems of enlargement for intergovernmental cultural co-operation
21. Enlargement has been sudden. In five years since 1989 the number of countries involved has virtually doubled (the geographical area covered more so). The nature of cultural co-operation has also changed from multilateral co-operation to include also assistance, training and something often closer to humanitarian relief.
22. Though the budgetary situation is not good, the real difficulties lie in the lack of human resources.
Secretariat
23. Enlargement has indeed added serious practical problems. With emphasis on arranging meetings between experts and governmental representatives, the Council of Europe secretariat has found itself often more occupied with visas, flight tickets, etc. than with cultural policies. The lack of adequate communication facilities with central and eastern Europe (language, telephone and fax) is a particularly significant factor.
24. Another problem is that of co-ordinating the often overlapping programmes generated by enlargement: activities funded by the Cultural and Sports Funds, the youth programmes, programmes of co-operation and assistance with countries of central and eastern Europe (Demosthenes and Demosthenes bis, Lode and Themis), confidence building measures, Gypsies, the action plan against intolerance, packages for parts of former Yugoslavia, etc.
25. Credit must be given to the degree of co-ordination that the Council of Europe secretariat is so far managing to maintain. Its relatively small size is to a certain extent to its advantage.
26. For the last two years no new posts have been created in the Directorate for Education Culture and Sport (DECS) though seven further countries joined the Cultural Convention in that period. Increases have been in temporary staff paid from the Cultural Fund, but without the necessary management and guidance from overworked permanent staff.
27. The same lack of human resources applies to the media and youth sectors.
28. Attention has not been given to preparing the permanent secretariat for the special problems of enlargement. Nor has any increase been provided in the travel office or an extra outlet at the bank.
29. Enlargement has meant that Council of Europe meeting rooms are too small, that meeting times are too short for delegations to express themselves. The secretariat has no chance to interact with individual delegations. Social arrangements have been largely abandoned.
30. These problems are compounded by the fact that the permanent secretariat does not necessarily include nationals of the countries involved. It will take time for the secretariat to develop an understanding of central and eastern Europe.
31. These remarks may seem obvious but these problems have had a very negative effect on the current quality of Council of Europe activity. They complement the observations of Sir Keith Speed and Mr Schiesser in the former's recent report on the budgetary prospects of enlargement (Doc. 7180 rev.). They are all the more relevant given the fact that those working in the cultural sector are already working directly with forty-three countries.
The problem of official languages
32. As a cultural committee, we are in favour of maintaining the linguistic diversity of Europe even if this might involve certain economic disadvantages. We do not favour any one European language, but would stress the need for every European to be fluent in at least one other language and be acquainted with others.
33. When it comes to the running of the Council of Europe, to working papers and interpretation needs at committee level, consideration must be given to the nature of available funding (which is minimalist) and to the conditions on which its permanent secretariat has been recruited (English-French). The system cannot be changed at this stage as direct communication is essential to the successful operation of the Council. The same conditions should therefore be applied in the selection of governmental and parliamentary representation. No comparison can be made with direct election to the European Parliament.
34. The situation is very different however when it comes to adopted texts: here there is every reason to press strongly for their translation into as many languages as possible.
The Cultural Fund
35. At the outset of enlargement there was a significant increase in the Cultural Fund and in funding available for the co-operation and assistance programmes with central and eastern Europe. Some of the increase in the Cultural Fund was used to recruit temporary staff as mentioned above. In 1994 the grant-in-aid from Council of Europe member states was reduced by about 5% and for 1995 it has been reduced by a little more (see Appendix F).
36. The CDCC has reacted very strongly at this situation. The problems were set out by its Bureau in November 1994 in a letter addressed to the Rapporteur Group on Education, Culture and Sport of the Committee of Ministers and were endorsed in January by the CDCC, which "decided to convey to the Committee of Ministers its deep concern about the erosion of the financial basis for its activities as a result of the substantial reduction, for the second year running, of the grant-in-aid given by the member states of the Council of Europe to the Cultural Fund".
37. The point has been reached when the CDCC can no longer carry out a credible programme — the cuts are "seriously jeopardising the future of cultural co-operation".
38. Evidence of the predicament in which the CDCC finds itself can be seen in the very real difficulty we had in ensuring the continuation in 1995 of a small grant to the European Museum Trust. Without that grant the scheme would not have been able to continue.
39. One question that has been raised in the CDCC and also put in the Committee on Culture and Education is whether the various sectors of the CDCC (culture, cultural heritage, education and higher education) have been treated fairly. The figures are extremely difficult to interpret as accounting has changed over the years (and improved). The real loser at present would seem to be that of higher education and research. It has not been possible for us to show that the cultural heritage sector has in any way suffered from its move into the area of the European Cultural Convention.
40. We believe that the Assembly must add its support to ensuring that the recent reductions in the Cultural Fund are made up in the 1996 budget.
41. In particular it is very much to be deplored if enlargement is being used as a means for certain member states to reduce their individual contributions to the Cultural Fund.
The Sports Fund
42. The Sports Fund suffers from similar problems to the Cultural Fund: wider membership and stagnant resources. The two sports conventions have no independent funding, and rely on meagre contributions from the Sports Fund — yet both conventions have twenty-five or more Contracting Parties. For the co-operation and assistance activities in central and eastern Europe, the Sports Fund has been supplemented by voluntary contributions, but these are now nearly exhausted, and the future of the much appreciated SPRINT programme is in doubt.
The youth sector
43. There are problems in staffing and in funding the programme being developed in the European Youth Centre in Budapest. This prompted Sir Russell Johnston's question in October to the Chairman-in-Office of the Committee of Ministers. This is an exciting new project — the first Council of Europe presence in central and eastern Europe — that the Assembly Committee on Culture and Education has supported from the start (see Opinion No. 157 of 1991). We should follow the evolution of this sector with care.
Mass media and co-operation and assistance programmes
44. It is difficult to gain a clear picture of the cultural component. No detailed comments can therefore be attempted at this point.
45. In his report on the budgetary prospects of enlargement (Doc. 7180 rev.), Sir Keith Speed argued firmly for enlargement to be met with increased resources. Sir Russell Johnston observed on threatened cuts in the programme of the new European Youth Centre in Budapest that "enlargement should not depend on the unpredictability of charity, national or private" (Assembly, 5 October 1994).
46. We should continue to keep an eye on the various areas of the funding of cultural co-operation with the support and assistance of the Committee on the Budget and the Intergovernmental Work Programme (Recommendation 1250).
The problems for the Parliamentary Assembly
47. The Assembly has played a central role in the development of cultural co-operation in the Council of Europe. It is a full member of the Council for Cultural Co-operation (with voting rights equivalent to three countries — were these ever to be exercised) and has ex officio status on a wide range of committees in the fields of sport, youth and mass media (see Appendix C). It is therefore in a position to interact with virtually every aspect of cultural co-operation carried out in the Council of Europe.
48. In addition the Assembly has insisted from the first cultural debate in 1949 on the importance of a special relationship with Unesco. The Committees on Culture and Education and on Science and Technology co-operate directly with the organisation on specific issues; and the Assembly provides a parliamentary forum. This is also the case for the educational work of OECD.
49. The possibility exists for contact with the Commission of the European Union and for co-operation with sister committees in the European Parliament.
50. The Assembly is also in working contact with the innumerable non-governmental organisations on which a greater part of European cultural co-operation increasingly depends. In certain cases this contact is even institutionalised (such as Europa Nostra, European Cultural Foundation, European Science Foundation, European Museum Trust).
51. This point has been also made in earlier reports. The argument has been advanced on more than one occasion for further resources to assist the Assembly in keeping ahead of developments in the field of cultural co-operation (for example by Mr Müller in Doc. 5871 (1988) and Mrs Hawlicek in Doc. 6850 (1993)). No further resources have however materialised.
52. Now there is the additional problem of enlargement. This hits us both at parliamentary and secretariat levels. Let us hope that it will be the straw that breaks the camel's back and finally produces an improvement in the chronic situation of the Assembly's ability to face up to its responsibilities in the cultural field.
53. Unlike MEPs the parliamentarians of the Assembly cannot spend 100% of their time on Europe. Far from it. Moreover they cannot be sure of staying for long on Assembly delegations, or if they do stay long risk they being accused of absenteeism by those who elected them for something else. The case of members such as Mr Müller (Assembly member from 1968 to 1994 and representative on many intergovernmental committees) is very much the exception.
54. Nor do national parliamentarians immediately understand the intricacies of intergovernmental co-operation in specialised areas. The issues are far from those at the forefront of international politics and do not call simply for the application of general concepts such as international law. The MPs have to be well involved or well briefed before they can make judgements.
55. The Assembly Committee on Culture and Education has been experiencing enlargement as it has developed in the intergovernmental sector since 1989. By and large the extension of the European Cultural Convention has been the same as that of special guest status in the Assembly (see Appendix D). This has given greater reality to the area of cultural co-operation.
56. In practice, however, it has not been easy for the committee to keep up. MPs have not had more hours added to their day and the size of its secretariat has remained unchanged.
57. The Assembly political groups have also begun to play a more active role. This adds a further dimension to work at committee level (representation, etc.).
58. In these circumstances the Committee on Culture and Education can accept the proposal that it be subdivided into three committees:
—on culture and the cultural heritage;—
—on education, youth and sport;—
—on media.59
59. This proposal also forms part of an attempt to manage the increase in Assembly membership as a result of enlargement of the Council of Europe. In the wider context the aim is to enable new members to participate in committee work while keeping the size of committees down to manageable numbers. It also provides more positions of authority.
60. It represents however an opportunity to reduce the workload on the single Committee on Culture and Education and to add secretariat assistance.
61. The one draw-back is the lack of over-view that such a division entails. The Committee has often in the past insisted on the complementarity of culture and education and on the relevance of the media. Where, for another example, would the recent colloquy on history have been placed? For this reason the committee bureau is insisting that the resulting committees be grouped within a cultural division to be created in the Office of the Clerk of the Assembly just as the subject-related division recently set up for the environment (see Opinion No. 172).
62. The final proposals for structural change will be decided in due course by the Assembly itself. It will be necessary however for the Committee of Ministers to provide logistical support.
Conclusion
63. European cultural co-operation will only survive in the Council of Europe if it is given the necessary secretariat and financial resources. An enormous amount of good will and hope hangs on what the Council of Europe might be able to do, and especially in central and eastern Europe. It is the responsibility of the Committee of Ministers (and in particular of European Union member states) to ensure that these resources are made available.
Appendices (available separately):
A. Brief historical survey of the structures of cultural co-operation in Europe
B. The main phases of cultural co-operation in the Council of Europe
C. The official status of the Assembly in the various bodies involved in cultural co-operation in the Council of Europe
D. Comparative table of membership of the European Cultural Convention, the Council of Europe and special guest status in the Assembly
E. Texts adopted by the Assembly in the cultural field
F. Comparative resources (financial and secretariat)
Reporting committee: Committee on Culture and Education.
Budgetary implications for the Assembly: to be included in the Assembly budgetary appropriations for 1996.
Reference to committee: Recommendation 1216 (1993).
Draft recommendation: adopted unanimously by the committee on 20 March 1995.
Members of the committee: Mrs Fischer (Chairperson), Sir Russell Johnston, Mr de Puig (Vice-Chairpersons) (Alternate: Recoder), MM. Alegre, Arnalds, Bartumeu Cassany, Bauer, Berg, Berti, Bonnici, Brugger, Croze, Decagny, Deniau, Mrs Fleeetwood, MM. Galanos, Gellért Kis, Baroness Gould of Potternewton, MM. Gül, Hint, Baroness Hooper, MM. Jurkāns, Karas, Kollwelter, Konecny, Kouck, López Henares, Malachowski, Maloney, Maruflu, Mrs Mihaylova, MM. Mocioi, Monfils, Muehlemann, Mrs Naoumova, MM. Paunescu, Probst, Rivelli, Mrs Robert, Mr Roseta, Mrs Ryynänen, MM. Seeuws, Serra, Siwiec, Školč, Slobodnik, Sofoulis, Stefanopoulos, Szakàl, Mrs Terborg, Ms Toernaes, Mr Verbeek, Mrs Verspaget, Mr Vogt, Mrs Wärnersson, Mr Zingeris.
N.B. The names of those who took part in the vote are printed in italics.
Secretaries to the committee: MM. Grayson and Ary.