Explanatory Memorandum to COM(2012)407 - Union action for the European Capitals of Culture for the years 2020 to 2033 - Main contents
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This page contains a limited version of this dossier in the EU Monitor.
| dossier | COM(2012)407 - Union action for the European Capitals of Culture for the years 2020 to 2033. |
|---|---|
| source | COM(2012)407  |
| date | 20-07-2012 |
The European Capitals of Culture were created in 1985 as an intergovernmental initiative. They were transformed officially into a European Union action in 1999 in order to make the initiative more effective. New criteria and selection procedures were established, a chronological list of Member States was drawn up indicating the order in which they were entitled to host the title, and a European panel of independent experts was created to assess the applications (Decision N° 1419/1999/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 May 1999 establishing a Community action for the European Capital of Culture event for the years 2005 to 2019). The rules were renewed in 2006 in order to develop the effectiveness of the initiative further by stimulating competition between the cities and fostering the quality of the bids. These new rules also introduced various measures to accompany the cities in their preparation, including a monitoring process (Decision N° 1622/2006/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 2006 establishing a Community action for the European Capital of Culture event for the years 2007 to 2019).
Decision N° 1622/2006/EC will end in 2019. The competition for the title is currently launched six years in advance in order to give the cities sufficient time for their preparation before the beginning of the year of the title. Therefore, the new legal base for the continuation of the European Capitals of Culture should be adopted in 2013 in order to ensure a smooth transition in 2020.
The Commission's work on the proposal for the European Capitals of Culture after 2019 has been based on broad range of inputs.
Since 2007, the Commission ensures the external and independent evaluation of each European Capital of Culture. So far the 2007-2010 Capitals were evaluated and the 2011 evaluation is underway. Previously the 1995 – 2004 European Capitals of Culture had been evaluated externally in a single report. The Commission also commissioned an evaluation of the selection and monitoring procedures introduced by Decision N° 1622/2006/EC.
An online consultation was carried out between 27 October 2010 and 12 January 2011 and 212 responses were received. This online consultation was followed by a public meeting which took place in Brussels on 2 March 2011 and was attended by more than 200 people including a large majority of representatives of public authorities and organisations.
Important inputs in the reflection on the future of the European Capitals of Culture were also provided by the own initiative report adopted by the Committee of the Regions in February 2012 and by the 25th anniversary conference of the European Capitals of Culture organised in Brussels in March 2010 and which gathered more than 50 past, present and future Capitals or bidding cities and 500 participants.
It is important to note that on all the key issues there was a broad convergence between the evidence and data collected through the evaluations on the one hand and the views expressed during the consultation process on the other hand. This enabled the Commission to draw a number of important lessons for the future of the European Capitals of Culture.
There is a large consensus that the Capitals are a highly successful action, as well as a very strong support for their continuation after 2019. It clearly emerges that they have become one of the most ambitious cultural initiatives in Europe, both in scope and scale. They have also become one of the most visible and prestigious initiatives of the Union and probably one of the most appreciated by European citizens.
The European Capitals of Cultural can bring many benefits to cities when they are planned with consideration. They remain first and foremost a cultural event, but they can also have significant social and economic benefits, particularly when the event is embedded as part of a long-term culture led development strategy in the city and its surrounding region. It should also be noted that although only one city in each Member State can host the event in any given year, the competition has an important leverage effect on the development of new or more effective policies and strategies even in cities which do not win the title.
However, the European Capitals of Culture are also highly challenging. Staging a year long programme of cultural activities is demanding and some Capitals have been more successful than others in capitalising on the potential of the title. The main challenge for the future will therefore be to build on the strengths of the current scheme, while at the same time helping each single Capital to fully exploit the potential of the title and to optimise the cultural, economic and social benefits.
On the basis of the results of the evaluations and of the public consultation, the Commission identified the five main problems faced by cities in their preparation for the title:
· The most common difficulty so far has been the effect of national and local politics on the budgets, which need to be as stable as possible between the bidding and final stages, as well as the impact of politics on other aspects of the organisation of the event. Political support is fundamental as most of the funds are public, and without it a city cannot have a credible bid, but at the same time the implementing team needs its artistic independence to be respected in order to protect the credibility of the event.
· The evaluations have also shown that in some of the past Capitals, the European dimension was not well understood and could have been more visible.
· Several cities have failed to embed the title in a longer-term strategy and have struggled as a consequence to ensure the legacy of the title in the city.
· There is still a lack of measurement mechanisms put in place by the cities themselves and thus of primary data on the impacts of the title. This makes a comparison between the Capitals difficult and weakens the transfer of experience.
· Finally, many Member States have already hosted the title on several occasions and some of them only have a limited number of realistic candidates for a large scale event such as the European Capitals of Culture. Hosting the title could have strong negative effects on a city which has too limited capacities and selecting weak Capitals would risk damaging the prestige and brand value of the European Capitals of Culture in the long term.
On this basis, three options were tested for the future of the European Capitals of Culture after 2019:
· (1) continuing the action with an identical legal base to the current Decision to which simply a new chronological list of Member States is annexed;
· (2) stopping the action;
· (3) continuing the action with a new legal base which addresses the problems encountered with the current Decision. For this third option, two sub-options were tested:
– (3a) a new chronological list of Member States is annexed;
– (3b) the title is awarded on the basis of an open competition.
The various cultural, economic, social and environmental impacts were examined for each option. The options were then assessed and ranked according to their effectiveness in terms of achieving the objectives of the European Capitals of Culture, their efficiency, their costs and administrative burden, their coherence with broader Union political objectives and their synergies and complementarities with other Union objectives, and their feasibility.
The option with the most positive overall assessment is option 3a, namely a new legal base with a chronological list of Member States. This option scored higher than all other options and was ranked as the preferred option.
The main results of the evaluations and of the public consultation, as well as the logical steps followed for the comparison of the options are summarized in the Commission Staff Working Document which is accompanying the present proposal.
Contents
The European Capitals of Culture are based on article 167 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. This article gives the EU the mandate to 'contribute to the flowering of the cultures of the Member States, while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore'. The Union shall also encourage 'cooperation between Member States' in the field of culture and 'if necessary, support and supplement their action'.
In line with article 291 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, under the new Decision the official designation of the European Capitals of Culture formalising the recommendations made by the European panel of independent experts should be made by the Commission.
The proposal is in keeping with the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. The main level of action for the implementation of the European Capitals of Culture remains at local and national level. However, the evaluations and the public consultation have shown that the Union has a crucial role to play in the coordination between Member States and in ensuring the application of common, clear and transparent criteria, as well as regarding selection and monitoring procedures for the European Capitals of Culture. The Union will also support the preparation of the selected cities through the recommendations of the European panel of experts, the exchange of best practices between cities and a financial contribution in the form of the Melina Mercouri Prize.
As was already the case under Decision N° 1622/2006/EC, the Commission's proposal has no direct budgetary implication.
The period covered by the proposal will coincide with several multi annual financial frameworks. For the 2014-2020 financial framework, the financial aspects in relation to the European Capitals of Culture, including the Melina Mercouri Prize, the costs of the European panel of experts, the visibility of the action at European level and the human resources needed within the Commission to support the action, will be dealt with in the framework of the Creative Europe Programme.
For the years after 2020, the legal and financial aspects of the European Capitals of Culture will be directly linked to the provisions included in the future multi annual financial frameworks, and on this basis, they should also be dealt with in the framework of the respective Union programmes supporting culture.
On the basis of the results of the evaluations and of the public consultation, the proposal for the European Capitals of Culture after 2019 retains the main features and general structure of the current scheme:
· The title will continue to be awarded on the basis of a chronological list of Member States. Such a rotating system proved to be the only system which ensured an equal opportunity for each Member State to host the title and a geographical balance in the location of the European Capitals of Culture, and hence the opportunity for the Union to highlight the diversity of European cultures and for the public across Europe to experience the event close to home.
· The title will continue to be reserved to cities. Cities will also continue to have the possibility to involve their surrounding region in order to reach a wider public and amplify the impacts, however past experience has shown that the clear leadership of one city is a key success factor.
· The attribution of the title will continue to be based on a cultural programme created specifically for the year of the title in order to foster a strong European dimension.
· The two stage selection process carried out by a European panel of independent experts has proven to be fair and transparent and will be kept. It enabled in particular cities to improve their applications between the pre-selection and the final selection phase on the basis of expert advice received from the panel.
· The title will continue to be awarded for a full year to keep it distinctive and ambitious.
At the same time, a number of improvements are proposed in order to address the problems encountered with the current Decision and to help all cities to make the most of the title. The main changes introduced by the new legal base are the following:
· The criteria have been made more explicit in order to give more guidance to the candidate cities and more measurable in order to help the panel of experts in the selection and monitoring of cities. A special attention was paid to optimise the potential leverage effect of the initiative on stimulating long-term local culture led development strategies, to ensure the capacity of candidate cities to actually host the title, to boost the European dimension and visibility of the cultural programmes, to ensure the high quality of the cultural and artistic content, to foster a large participation of the local populations and to try to ensure the stability of the budgets and the independence of the artistic teams.
· The conditionality of the Melina Mercouri Prize has been reinforced. Furthermore, the Prize will no longer be paid three months before the beginning of the year of the title, but during the middle of the year itself in order to be certain that cities keep to their commitments regarding in particular funding, programming and Union visibility.
· It is stated explicitly that the European panel is not obliged to give a positive recommendation if none of the bids fulfils the criteria.
· The accompanying measures which support the cities during the preparation period after winning the title have been strengthened in order to provide further support and guidance to the cities. An additional monitoring meeting has been introduced, visits to the cities by panel members will be more systematic and the exchange of experience and best practices between past, present and future Capitals, as well as candidate cities will be reinforced.
· New evaluation obligations were introduced for the cities themselves in order to have a more comprehensive view of the impacts of the title and to provide comparable data.
· Finally, it is proposed to open the action again to the participation of candidate and potential candidate countries after 2019, as was the case until 2010. The experience among others of Sibiu 2007 and Istanbul 2010 has shown that this can be beneficial both for these countries and the Union.