A Euro-Mediterranean Cultural Strategy

Culture and dialogue between cultures have enjoyed increasing importance in the Euro-Mediterranean partnership in recent years - a fact underlined by the many joint actions and cooperation programmes that have been approved and successfully implemented: the creation of the Anna Lindh Foundation, EuroMed Audiovisual, EuroMed Heritage, the Regional Information and Communication programmes and the EuroMed Youth programme.

The Euro-Mediterranean partnership work-plan, agreed by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs in Lisbon (November 2007), includes the organisation of the third EuroMed Conference of Ministers of Culture, [51 KB] Athens, 29 – 30 May 2008.

Building on previous meetings, (Bologna 1996 and Rhodes 1998) and the meeting of the Euro-Mediterranean Ministers of Foreign Affairs (Crete 2003) devoted to the dialogue between cultures, the meeting offered a good opportunity to exchange views on the cultural dimension of the Partnership and, in particular, on the importance of dialogue between cultures. The meeting took place during the “2008 European Year of Intercultural Dialogue” and – following the decision of the Euro-Mediterranean Foreign Ministers in November 2007 – in the specific context of the "2008 Euro-Mediterranean year of dialogue between cultures".

The Ministers agreed on a set of conclusions,  from which the main objective is to mark the starting point of a fully-fledged Euro-Mediterranean Strategy on Culture, encompassing cooperation in both dialogue between cultures and cultural policy.

An Ad Hoc working group at expert’s level has been created to draw up this Euro-Mediterranean Cultural Strategy and concrete proposals to be endorsed by the next meeting of the Ministers of Culture, to be held in the first semester of 2010.