FIAD & 110+ cultural organisations call on Member States to include culture in recovery strategies

In partnership with a wide array of cultural networks and organisations, FIAD calls on the Member States and the European Commission to secure a future for culture and cultural life in Europe.

Following the open letter published by 110 pan-European networks on 30 October 2020 “Make culture central in the EU recovery”, the group comes together again to reiterate their call to the national governments and the European Commission. In the second open letter published today by the group, coordinated by Culture Action Europe, the European cultural community call on the Member States and the European Commission to secure a future for culture and cultural life in Europe.

We ask the Member States to reactivate cultural life in Europe, while keeping existing and putting in place new dedicated support schemes far beyond stabilisation of the situation. This will help rebuild confidence of both cultural communities and citizens, ensure a smooth resumption of activities and offer hope to the millions of Europeans whose lives have become barren, devoid of cultural and social connection.

Crucially, by now, the majority of EU countries have presented the drafts of their National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) to the European Commission, starting a time of informal dialogue and exchanges in the weeks to come, before the formal deadline of 30 April.

This is a key moment to fine-tune and validate those plans.

• We reiterate our call made on 30 October 2020 and urge the EU and its Member States to fully include culture in each and every National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), and dedicate, at the very least, 2% of the RRF envelope for culture. We have seen strong political will, as expressed among others by the European Parliament, to put culture as a priority sector when using funds from Next Generation EU. It is now time to translate this commitment in the NRRPs.

• In addition, we call on the Member States to continuously involve and engage the representatives of their cultural communities and civil society organisations in the design and implementation of the NRRPs, as indicated in the European Commission guidelines for the preparation of the national recovery and resilience plans. Long-term structural support to rebuild the European cultural ecosystem needs to be co-developed, involving all relevant stakeholders, both public and private.

Reinvigorating the cultural ecosystem not only offers hope to millions of workers who saw their jobs eradicated or endangered by the pandemic, it can offer new meaning and purpose to all Europeans and the European project.

Let us put culture at the heart of Europe’s recovery.

Find the letter in full here.