Vassiliou to attend Council of Ministers of Culture of South East Europe – arts education, heritage and cooperation in focus
The importance of culture and arts education in human development and as a priority for cooperation for the EU and countries of South East Europe will be a focus of a ministerial meeting in Brdo on 8-9 April.
The annual meeting of the Council of Ministers of Culture of South East Europe (CoMoCoSEE) will be attended by Androulla Vassiliou, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, Irina Bokova, UNESCO Director General, and Snežana Samardžić-Marković, Director General for Democracy at the Council of Europe, as well as by the Ministers from the region.
They will also focus on how to build on existing culture and cultural heritage initiatives in the region, which is home to around 60 sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The need to protect and promote this priceless heritage helped to inspire the creation of the Council of Ministers of Culture of South East Europe in 2005. Its representatives include the Ministers of Culture of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Slovenia and Turkey. Slovenia holds the Presidency of the CoMoCoSEE this year. The Ministerial grouping acts as a key regional policy platform in the field of culture and heritage, promoting cooperation with the EU, the Council of Europe and UNESCO. The European Commission supports these objectives. The EU Culture Programme already co-finances culture and heritage projects in all the region’s countries. The proposed Creative Europe programme (2014-2020) would also be open to them on an equal footing with EU Member States. Cultural heritage in Southern-East Europe is also strongly supported also by the EU Pre-Accession Policy.
