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I would think about 3 different levels in cultural diplomacy. First of all, diplomats have to work on frameworks to make sure that you can travel as an artist, get a visa, there is no censorship. Secondly, culture is a tool to work on cultural diplomacy, and I think we made a lot of mistakes in the past. After 1989, we, collectively, did not pay enough attention to promote Western values (…). Finally, culture is important in diplomacy (…) because sometimes you do not know how to communicate, so there is art.
They - the rest of the world - think Europe is a sort of economic entity. Therefore we have to become political, we have to become more cultural. Because I do not want to sell Europe as an import-export club.
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This debate on Europe (…) is taking place with young people. Are they not more connected to the local, and the global through digital information?
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The uniqueness of this project is that we are trying to respect diversity, implementing solidarity, to cooperate and to create a political experiment. I see the major role of the EU as an enabler in this process, on top of what the Member States may do, not as an entity which should capture one image, frame it and say this is European culture.
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The fact that we stay away from the content, that is the value. The fact that we do not want to determine the content is in itself a value that we are exporting.
We should concentrate first on having the basic rights on where the European Union can do things, where the Member States are absolutely unable to do things on their own. And then we can prove our value and build from that.
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We need to build things about how we go, about understanding how we position ourselves, how we engage, how we converse, through culture, through the economy (…). How can you have a dialogue with somebody if you cannot really think about what collaboration looks like?
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I would like to see what more Europe could actually mean. For example through more political leadership to help facilitate smart EU policies and dealing with culture and EU’s external actions. I would like to see a European University on Tahrir square in Cairo and not just an American university. I would like to see more visas for artists and other professionals to come to work in Europe. I would like to see more content and heritage uploaded on Europeana. I would like to see less bureaucracy for small cultural organisations when they are applying for a grant on the European level. I would like also to see less fragmentation on copyright management of the European Union. And I would like to see less over-emphasis on the economic value of culture.
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I do not think it is necessary that we agree on what exactly is included into European culture and what is not, and it is a pretty hopeless task anyhow.
If we believe that Europe has a role to play in the political domain, in the domain of sustainability, in the domain of climate control and all these things, then it would be crazy to ignore the cultural dimension as a the part of that larger whole. And even if European culture is little more than the sum of national cultures, it is a bloody interesting combination of national cultures!
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If we have an economic pillar, we have a political and a cultural pillar and society seems to be healthy if those three are in balance. We are way outbalanced now: the economic pillar is far too strong for the political pillar, for the ideological argument, but also for the cultural pillar. We need to undercrise the part of that process to bring these things into some kind of balance. I think we are in trouble (…) by discussing the superstructures and the frameworks.(…) What is this so called European culture that the European cultural embassies actually represent? What do they stand for?
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An EU-wide foreign cultural policy is the missing piece for what could become Europe’s field of global leadership in the 21st century – Culture and creative industry.
Diversity currently is considered a weak point in all fields of EU politics – with the exception of culture. Instead of confessing weakness a European Foreign Cultural policy can communicate strength.
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The trend for globalisation is a trend towards uniformity. I think we should, amongst us, abstain for using the word "globalisation" in relation to the arts and culture. Instead, I would prefer to use the word "cosmopolitanism."
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