"Culture is this continent's driving force"

"Culture is this continent's driving force, its engine". Mr Wender's speech was a passionate call to revolutionise communication on Europe by focusing on its cultural wealth. In her concluding remarks, Odile Quintin, European Commission Director General responsible for culture, underlined the importance of work already done by the three culture civil society Platforms and by the national expert groups working through the Open Method of Coordination. This is a solid basis which feeds upcoming initiatives, including Member State conclusions on ways to promote a "creative generation", Commission proposals for the next generation of EU programmes, and a Green Paper on unlocking the full potential of cultural and other creative industries. Partnership building was a recurring theme of the Forum and was highlighted by the range of Commission Directorates General whose senior staff moderated workshops, reaching from regional policy to enterprise, from external relations to the information society. Achievements since the adoption of the Agenda for Culture in 2007 show that this type of thinking and acting "across policy borders" - at European, but also national, regional and local levels - is crucial if culture is to play its full role as an integral facet of very many policies. Video highlights and summary conclusions will soon be available online. In the meantime, a good overview of policy documents is available on: /culture/our-policy-development/library-of-policy-documents_en.xmlPress Release