70 cents for culture! campaign
In the latest spending negotiation, the European Parliament and the EU Council have settled for an extra 4 billion Euro budget. This is a major breakthrough, and good news for culture, as it is the first time that culture has achieved a share of the extra budget allocation.
The bulk of the additional funding will go towards common foreign and security policy spending, the Life-Long Learning programme (containing the Erasmus student exchange), and the Trans-European Networks infrastructure programme.
Extra funding has also been allocated to the Youth, Culture 2007 and Citizens for Europe programmes.
The European Cultural Foundation is delighted with the fact that culture is now recognised as an important sector by the European Parliament. However the total budget allocation for culture is still way below the percentage that the ECF and the Culture Action Europe had hoped to achieve through the 70 cents campaign.
Both will continue to lobby for increased funding in the coming year, and will place particular emphasis on the run up to the next spending negotiation for 2007 to 2008.
Short background info:
Europe needs an appropriate cultural budget for the new EU cultural programme for 2007-2013. This conviction lies behind the ‘70 cents for culture' campaign, which has argued for a tenfold increase in the budget allocated to the Culture 2000 programme. Only a meagre 7 cents per EU citizen were spend on culture.
With the campaign's launch in the European Parliament on 15 March 2005, the ECF and Culture Action Europe called on policymakers at national and European level to give a considerable boost to European cultural cooperation by increasing the budget for culture to 70 cents per EU citizen per year. Read press release.
The campaign won broad cross-party support among MEPs. Their eventual recommendation was for a budget of Euro 500 million - roughly 17 cents per EU citizen. Green MEP Helga Truepel's amendment for a Euro 2.2bn budget (equivalent to 70 cents) was rejected at the September meeting of the European Parliament's Committee on Education and Culture. MEP Graca Moura's proposal of Euro 600m budget was adopted instead.
The campaign will continue its efforts, notably at the level of the EU Member States.
Infomaterial:
Read the Manifesto (short info)
Read the Backgroundpaper
For more information, contact Isabelle Schwarz, Manager of the Cultural Policy Development Department.
