The European Union and crisis management: policy and legal aspects (original) (raw)
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European Union and Challenges of Cultural Policies: Critical Perspectives. An Introduction
Croatian International Relations Review, 2018
This introductory article contextually frames the contributions to the special issue gathering articles critically addressing the key questions and challenges that the European Union (EU) and national cultural policies are facing in the 21st century. Interdisciplinary contributions in this special issue point to the diverse understandings of culture, the complexity of the EU governance system, and the discrepancy and mismatch of the national and EU levels that regulate the field of culture. The authors detect the inconsistent development strategies on different policy levels, and point to the democratic deficits of the EU governance system and EU policies. Selected contributions address a further focal shift of EU culture policies toward an economistic orientation to culture, while others address the need for a more critical approach that moves beyond predominantly positivistic and normative approaches to cultural policy research in Europe.
Culture has been widely treated as having a dual rationale at EU Level, both symbolic and economic, however scholars observing the post- Maastricht period of EU cultural action have noted a steady ‘instrumentalisation’ of culture and recent research suggests that a radical shift has taken place with the symbolic dimension displaced and the economic dimension dominant. The responsibility for this has been placed with the Commission, the actor which has, from the beginning, been most consistent in promoting economic objectives for culture. Having gained official competence to act on cultural issues with the Treaty of Maastricht, the cultural programmes and actions which followed in the mid 1990s have offered a tangible way of assessing the development of the EU’s cultural policy, casting light both on how the thematic conceptions of culture have evolved and what influences various actors have had on the justifications for cultural action. Research has shown that whilst Commission dominance and the ‘commodification’ of culture is a valid observation in the EU’s latest cultural programme, it has been a sudden rather than gradually developing change and is less applicable to the cultural actions, thus cannot be taken as reflective of the EU’s cultural policy as a whole.
Culture and the EU’s Struggle for Legitimacy
Re: Thinking Europe Thoughts on Europe: Past, Present and Future
Europe’s current crises seem to have true potential of splitting the Union apart. The Euro crisis, the looming threat of Brexit, and the refugee crisis have put the legitimacy of the EU and the integration project into serious question in the eyes of many. The EU’s multiple crisis has once again shifted the question to the fore of why we are in this together to begin with. What are the ideas, commonalities, and aspirations that unite us? What differences divide us, are they dooming integration to failure, and do they have to be divisive? Might shared ideas, values, and goals help in overcoming Europe’s present discontents, or is all lost in the face of clashing interests and incompatible identities? What role might culture play in this? It is important to see today’s crisis of EU legitimacy in historical context. This is what I will try to do in this essay [...]
Culture as a key factor within Western societies and a political tool for the EU
What could be more antithetical than the alliance of the words “culture” and “political power”? Yet, for over fifty years, the process of European integration has been linking these opposing concepts: Europe, which is too often considered in economic terms, is first and foremost a cultural entity. European culture, ‘a sort of UFO’ for most Europeans has become a major political and philosophical issue. Given their political and strategic importance so-called ‘geo-cultural’ issues have been called upon to constitute, along with geopolitical and economic issues, a governance axis. The European Union’s current mode of cultural action, intrinsic to national policies, is unable to address these issues. Indeed the EU should completely rethink its conception and political implication of culture, and recognize its great importance, both for the success of the European integration, and for the new civic relationships which are developing today in our local, national and global communities.
Mirroring Jacques Delors’ much quoted ‘No one falls in love with a common market,’ there has been an increased emphasis on ‘culture’ as a vital tool in the European Union (EU) integration process. Yet, how these programs for ‘cultural exchange and dialogue’ affect artistic production, and reception, is rarely discussed. Drawing on interviews with actors in Berlin and Istanbul who engage with cultural policy in the European arena (2005–2008), this paper aims to illuminate the tensions that this nascent European cultural policy has engendered, not least with regard to the EU stipulations on national cultural sovereignty. I argue that while EU cultural initiatives indeed produce a kind of ‘Europeanization,’ they do so mainly through thematic and institutional incorporation. However, this type of integration tends to recast power differentials within the EU and beyond, despite proclaimed goals to the contrary, as cultural exchange programs tend to reinforce distinctions between ‘art proper’ and ‘ethnic cultural production.’
(2012) "Cultural Formations of the European Union: Integration, Enlargement, Nation and Crisis"
In this chapter, I explore different ways of considering national and transnational belonging in Europe, but then turn to thinking about the culture of Europe in terms of system and practice. While identity is important to consider in that context, I propose that we might compensate for the attitudinal bias of most studies of European and national cultures and consider in addition the ways in which national statuses within the European Union change while nonetheless reproducing the European Union's cultural system. I also consider the relatively abiding structures associated with European integration and elaborated through the Prodi Commission’s Euro and enlargement projects. I follow that by a more critical engagement of the systemic and practice-based contradictions around solidarity, equality, and diversity in enlargement and in the current sovereign debt crisis. I argue that while the Euro crisis might be resolved within the cultural formation of the European Union, especially if solidarity and equality are rearticulated with freedom and prosperity, the challenge of Mediterranean engagement makes explicit the deeper cultural problems associated with unreflexive secularity and cultural racism in European cultural formations. By considering these less articulated elements of European identity, the potentials of a more transcendent European Union grow
The new agenda for culture as a tool for European integration: a critical analysis
In May 2018 the European Commission published A New Agenda for Culture. Acknowledging the social and political challenges Europe faces today, through this Communication the Commission aims at contributing to European cohesion and integration through culture. This paper critically addresses the Communication in its form as the latest exercise by the European Commission, in relation to other institutions forming the European Union, to address a sense of European malaise resulting from a democratic deficit through cultural means. The experiences of more than three decades of cultural competence and the limits thereof in relation to the principle of subsidiarity exercised by Member States, traced back to the Treaty of the European Union of 1992, will be examined for the visions set out by the EU, the expectations generated and shortcomings suffered. The array of instruments in the field of culture conceived by the EU seems to have been counterproductive: rather than helping achieve social aims, they seem to have contributed to further alienation in part due to the self-serving purpose of these instruments (Barnett: 2001; Valentine: 2018). This paper argues that cultural projects, including Creative Europe flagships like the European Capital of Culture have turned efforts at participation and engagement into matters of self-satisfying bureaucratic merit and achievement. The tension between neoliberal economic aims and progressive social concerns that cuts across the new culture agenda will be highlighted in the context of wider European cultural policy. Possible outcomes of the agenda will be assessed in relation to the general political and social climate of the EU. Text begins here: 'Europe is more than a system of legal norms and rules and political institutions which regulate European citizenship. Europe is also a symbolic space where projections and memories, the collective experiences and identifications of the people of Europe are represented. Europe has a cultural meaning' (Eder 2000: 245).