Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-04-Speech-2-357"
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"en.20060404.25.2-357"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, I have placed on record a minority opinion in accordance with Rule 48 of our Rules of Procedure and I shall not vote in favour of this draft. Nonetheless, I thank Mrs Prets for her work. I shall give you the reasons for my position.
The project that aims to designate each year a European Capital of Culture gave rise, at the time of its inception, to enthusiasm and to a desire to stand out from the crowd, as well as to the awareness that culture is a valuable asset. For a decade now, the Commission and Parliament have been trying to inject a new dynamic into the project, but they have gone about it using the same resources that are crippling the European project in general. Instead of rebuilding the initial enthusiasm, with citizens who were supposed to identify with the project, the Commission and Parliament are setting themselves up as judges.
With my amendments, my proposal was to give the Member States the task of designating the European Capital of Culture according to their own criteria. That would have encouraged them to shoulder their responsibilities. Instead of strengthening subsidiarity in order to construct the European identity, an identity that is founded on our diversity, the institutions are now acting as project managers: they dictate, make selections and judge, without, for all that, bearing the cost of their decisions, since the European Union’s financial contribution remains small.
Bureaucracy rises like a rampart between local initiatives and, Commissioner, I can only hope that future panels will be more conscientious than those who judged the Luxembourg 2007 project without even all being present and without being informed about the plan to extend to the Great Region and without realising that Luxembourg’s proposal to choose Sibiu in Romania as a partner town was to become so innovative. Culture amounts to more than just publicity events.
The Capital of Culture project should be more than a long firework display of events and, in order to ensure continuity, I proposed to link with the consultations a network of Capitals of Culture to be organised with the support of the Commission. Instead of that we are now witnessing the parody of a network that jumbles together some of those that have been legitimately appointed with those who have assumed this title for themselves. It is time we finally protected the title of the European Capital of Culture."@en1
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