18/10/2005

Yesterday was vital for the Convention’s adoption on "cultural diversity". After the US’ repeated opposition – bringing some other countries along with them- and their threat to leave the Convention, its adoption seemed in jeopardy (lire la news). Japan did not arrange any efforts for mediation, the Director General of UNESCO being Japanese himself.

The US was in fact "content" to propose no lees than 28 amendments and to vote on them individually. All these amendments namely carried more specific references to other existing judicial instruments (take look specially at those of the WTO), placing before the antiquity or importance of the already existing regulations and trying to disregard "cultural diversity’s" own judicial value.

All these amendments had been rejected each time by vast majority. A small ‘decisive factor’ (sometimes a great number) of small countries occasionally joined the US’ point of view. Only Israel remained as the US’ unshakeable ally since the very beginning.

At the end of the session, it was the original Convention that was proposed to the representatives’ vote: 151 in favor, 2 against (US and Israel) and 2 abstentions, one of these was Australia’s.

This past Monday there previously figured a sort of general repetition of October 20th’s plenary session’s. One could be reasonably optimistic, since the US can still chose to change its opinion until the end. The current voluntary cultural aid to European politics – a European Commission policy and that of its 25 member states- are waiting on the hangwire until next Thursday’s vote.

(Translated from French)