I am in Brussels this week. This is a typical routine on my biweekly commutes to that city, for your reference.
I spent Monday at a culture conference, the contents of which have been somewhat anti-culture. The meeting concerned the online consultation that DG culture (in its wannabe way, perhaps) held earlier this year: with a number of citizens giving their input, the commission produced a briefing statement, brought in several bigwigs from the DG - including commissioner Jan Figel - and devoted a day to talking about it with various cultural stakeholders in European arts policy of whom you will, of course, never have heard.
Outsiders were informed that since "its inclusion in the Treaty on the European Union, cultural cooperation has become a new community competency." So what can Europe do for culture?
Here is a sample of the online consultation inputs - all of which are from leading stakeholder figures (didn't see any citizens), from organisations such as the International Photography Network and the Nordic Innovation Centre.
"We need to have a closer cooperation with stakeholders from different sectors supporting Culture and Creative Industries. If Europe should contribute to a professionalizing of the Creative Industries, we must strongly emphasise on the role of the Creative Industries entrepreneur through enhancing the knowledge of the economic setting and business know-how."
"Yes they are linked. Contribute - by making clear that the cultural disciplines have always influenced each other through history. - organise crosscultural concerts as well as crosscultural exhibitions, to be performed/shown in more than one place. - by creating chances for artists to take part in exchange and co-operation programmes. Give them more chances to elaborate projects on cultural integration."
Then:
"Art and culture come from the grass roots way of life. Artists should be empowered to continually reflect this social phenomenon with their artistic creations. The EC should empower inter-statal organisations to lead their members to the goal of integration in diversity."
I don't know quite what to make of all of this; the conference speeches were in the same vein.
I did vaguely why the conference hadn't invited in, say, Gunther Grass or Ryszard Kapuscinski to bring some liveliness into the proceedings.
At the usual elaborate lunch I met the chair of MTV Europe. We discussed Steve Strange, a music DJ from our youths - the early 90s - whom I remembered interviewing once at a European parliament theme television programme recording at the station's studios in Camden Lock, London. "We are trying to become more serious," he said.
MEPs were quizzed on what the knew of European youth culture. Patricia Rawlings - an authentic bluerinse Tory, no longer in the EP - was shown a man who walked on stage in bikers' gear, unzipped a banana from his trousers and started to eat. She replied, "He is obviously a squatter." (He was a heavy metal fan.) Another MEP in an elegant suit lamented that not enough discussion was devoted to the 20 million youth unemployed in Europe but spoilt it somewhat by bringing out a balloon which, when she had inflated it in front of my face, said, "vote socialist" - and I remember finishing my article with the words "MTV is becoming more serious, but not as serious clearly as the European parliament."
Of course, it was the facetiousness of youth. Now I know that the European parliament - indeed the whole EU - truly is a serious place.
