23/03/2005

The European Parliament received the public launch of the '70 Cents for Culture' campaign, an initiative of the European Cultural Foundation and the European Forum for Arts and Heritage aiming to increase the funding for the EU Culture 2007 programme to 340 million euros per year. This wishful amount would be the equivalent to 70 cents per citizen per year, against the 7 cents currently spent (annually 34 million euros), which is, according to MEP Andrew Duff, "a disgrace".

The future budget for Culture was placed in the centre of discussions and participants were unanimous about the key role that several cultural industries can play in the development of a peaceful, culturally diverse, prosperous and secure Europe. The European Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and multilingualism, Jan Figel said: "Culture can do a lot for Europe, but Europe should do a lot for culture" and Hans-Gert Pöttering, chairman EPP-ED Group stated that "the Commission has to be encouraged" to spend more money on cultural exchange and the realisation of cultural projects. Philippe de Buck, Secretary General of UNICE, "The Voice of Business in Europe", underlined that speaking about the cultural budget in terms of "expenditure" is not correct since Culture might contribute to increase employment: "It's an investment with a return."
After a successful launch the next step of the campaign will be the mobilisation of the Civil Society and the built of alliances in the Membre States. The new programme to be created by the European Commission (DG EAC) for the period 2007-2013 will replace the current Culture 2000