‘Culture in EU external relations’: an idea whose time has come?

Abstract

This chapter analyses the emergent cultural diplomacy discourse and practice of the European Union (EU) institutions, which has differed from that of nation-states. In semantics to begin with, since a far broader notion of ‘culture in EU external relations’ is EU usage. Yet Bhabha’s theoretical distinction between the ‘pedagogical’ and the ‘performative’ functions of nation-state narrative strategies holds at the supra-national scale as well: the author will explore the ways in which these functions have been appropriated by non-state actors. In EU cultural diplomacy as a ‘cultural policy of display’ in Raymond Williams’ sense, the agenda setting process has thus been marked by a polyvocal process of appropriation by different stakeholders. They have recently taken the discourse ‘beyond cultural diplomacy’ and expedient ‘soft power’ considerations, in a spirit of global cultural citizenship that privileges intercultural dialogue, mutuality and reciprocity. How this vision will be applied, however, is yet to be seen.

Keywords:

• European Union
• international cultural relations
• cultural diplomacy
• pedagogical and performative narrative strategies

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Gottfried Wagner for the insights he shared on the basis of his rich experience and Phillip Mar for the advice he gave in shaping the flow of the argument.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The author was the Scientific Coordinator/Team Leader for the study. The research team included Rod Fisher (assisted by Dr Carla Figueira), Dr Damien Helly and, on an ad hoc basis, Mr Gottfried Wagner.

2. Such data can be found in the publication European cultural external relations. Paving new ways issued in December 2014 by More Europe and ifa (Institut fur Auslandsbeziehungen, Stuttgart).

3. A great deal of confusion exists over EU titles containing the word ‘Council’. Among the EU institutions, the European Council, the key agenda setting body, is made up of heads of state or government (plus the President of the European Commission). The Council of the EU also exists: this body shares legislative powers with the Parliament and the Commission (which does all the drafting and has the monopoly of initiating proposals). All Member State governments are represented. The ‘Council of Europe’, however, is a totally distinct intergovernmental organization founded in 1949! See Sassatelli 2009 and http://europa.eu/about-eu/institutions-bodies/.

4. The ECF was behind the launching of the ERASMUS, TEMPUS and many other EU programmes, which it also managed for many years.

5. The principle of subsidiarity defined in Article 5 of the Treaty on EU is meant to ensure that decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizen and that constant checks are made to verify that action at Union level is justified in light of the possibilities available at national, regional or local level. The EU is not supposed to take action (except in the areas that fall within its exclusive competence), unless it is more effective than action taken at national, regional or local level. See http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/glossary/subsidiarity_en.htm.

6. See http://www.eunic-online.eu/?q=content/who-we-are.

7. The EU (in addition to its individual Member States) is a party to the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions and in fact championed its negotiation and adoption. Not surprisingly, in all EU discourse since the adoption of the treaty, ‘cultural diversity’ is understood principally as the flourishing of the cultural and creative industries sector of nation-states as well as supra-national entities such as the EU (see Saouma and Isar 2015).

8. This truly strange formulation is based on a misunderstanding of the notion of ‘soft power. A country cannot be ‘a’ soft power. The term was actually picked up, however, by European Commission officials from one of the consultants’ reports …

9. See http://moreeurope.org/.

10. The research would pertain to the 27 EU Member States themselves, together with Croatia as an acceding country in 2013, the 17 countries covered by the European Neighbourhood Policy, and the 10 countries considered to be ‘strategic partners’ of the EU: Brazil, Canada, China, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea and the United States of America.