Search results for "european Union"
showing 10 items of 1380 documents
Rhetoric of unity and cultural diversity in the making of European cultural identity
2011
The fundamental aim of the cultural policy of the European Union (EU) is to emphasize the obvious cultural diversity of Europe, while looking for some underlying common elements which unify the various cultures in Europe. Through these common elements, the EU policy produces ‘an imagined cultural community’ of Europe which is ‘united in diversity’, as one of the slogans of the Union states. This discourse characterizes various documents which are essential to the EU cultural policy, such as the Treaty of Lisbon, the European Agenda for Culture and the EU’s decision on the European Capital of Culture program. In addition, the discourse is applied to the production of cultural events in Europ…
EU heritage diplomacy : entangled external and internal cultural relations
2022
Cultural heritage is an expanding yet contested area of EU policymaking, which has recently been identified as an instrument for EU international cultural relations. In this article, drawing from critical heritage studies and recent scholarship on heritage diplomacy, we see external and internal cultural relations as blurred and deeply entangled in EU heritage policies. Empirically, we focus on the European Heritage Label (EHL), a central EU heritage policy instrument. We explore how heritage practitioners at selected EHL sites and EU heritage policymakers understand and give meanings to international cultural relations and explain the role of cultural heritage in diplomatic endeavours. Our…
Challenges for Creating Visibility of European Cultural Heritage
2019

 
 
 The European Heritage Label (EHL) is a recent flagship heritage action of the European Union and focuses on the European dimension of Europe’s histo- ry and heritage as part of the Union’s cultural policy. One of the central con- cerns of the EU’s cultural policy is to generate a sense of belonging and iden- tity among European citizens. While efficient promotion of the visibility of the EHL among European audiences could be expected corresponding to the political objectives, the EHL continues to struggle with broader public recog- nition. Based on fieldwork findings, the article discusses the visibility of the EHL action as a network of heritage sites that challenges n…
Narrativity and intertextuality in the making of a shared European memory
2016
The latest wave of European integration process, cultural Europeanization, includes complex processes, such as the attempts to create a shared European memory that would transcend national interpretations of the past. The cultural Europeanization can be perceived as a narrative operation: in it the EU, Europe, and Europeanness are given meanings and made sense of through narrativization. The article investigates the EU’s attempts to create a shared European memory by analyzing the exhibition narrative of the Parlamentarium, the visitors’ center of the European Parliament. The analysis indicates how the construction of an official shared European memory is operationalized through textual and…
Defining “National Treasures” in the European Union. Is the Sky Really the Limit?
2019
The main objective of this article is to analyse the scope of EU Member States’ right to determine national treasures for the purpose of Directive 2014/60/EU on the return of cultural objects. While investigating the issue at the EU, human rights, and constitutional levels, the authors argue that the right to define what constitutes national treasures is not an absolute right. The definition of this particular category of cultural objects cannot be used to circumvent the rules on the free movement of goods and to hamper this freedom in an unjustifiable and arbitrary manner. On the human rights and constitutional levels, Member States’ right cannot interfere with the right to enjoy one’s pos…
Discourses of Europeanness in the reception of the European Capital of Culture events: The case of Pécs 2010
2012
Europeanness has been determined in various ways in academic, political and everyday discussions. The concept has become profoundly current in European Union (EU) policy during the past few decades: the EU is paying more and more interest in creating cultural coherence in Europe. The EU has various cultural instruments, such as the European Capital of Culture programme (ECOC), which aim to produce and strengthen Europeanness and cultural identification with Europe among its citizens. The ECOC programme creates an ideological frame for an urban cultural event: the frame directs the reception and experiences of the festivals, exhibitions and performances in the ECOC. Pécs – a city in souther…
The protection of cultural heritage and the role of culture in promoting European integration
2019
This article analyzes the legal protection of cultural heritage and the role of cultural heritage in promoting European integration. From a legal perspective, the notion of culture stems from the preamble of the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity and is considered as a fundamental norm; however, cultural rights have been an overlooked and often ignored category of human rights for decades. The article thus aims at studying such a complex legal issue both from the perspective of International Law as well as under European Law in order to understand the way culture fosters integration within the European Union.
Observations on the Progress of Welfare-State Construction in Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic
2003
Three specialists in social services present an assessment of Hungary's performance during the economic transition from the perspective of social policy and the general welfare of the population. Using figures drawn from a variety of European sources, they offer a review of social expenditure, labor market tendencies, and the social security, health and education systems, comparing throughout with data from the Czech Republic, Poland and the European Union.
The Slovak Nation: From Czechoslovakia to Slovakia
2009
This chapter differs in composition from the two previous ones devoted to the politics of language in Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the short 20th century. With the exception of the brief wartime interlude of independent Slovakia (1939–1945), the Slovak nation found itself residing in Czechoslovakia between 1918 and 1992. This necessitated the representation of much Slovak history, and the vicissitudes of Czech-Slovak relations in the previous chapter, which nominally was devoted to matters Czech. It would soon be demonstrated that the past of the common state of the Czech and Slovaks could not be seamlessly divided into separate Czech and Slovak parts. Likewise, numerous international even…
Distinct Photophysics of the Isomers of B18H22 Explained
2012
The photophysics of the two isomers of octadecaborane(22), anti- and syn-B 18H 22, have been studied by UV-vis spectroscopic techniques and theoretical computational methods. In air-saturated hexane, anti-B 18H 22 shows fluorescence with a high quantum yield, Φ F = 0.97, and singlet oxygen O 2( 1Δ g) production (Φ Δ ∼ 0.008). Conversely, isomer syn-B 18H 22 shows no measurable fluorescence, instead displaying much faster, picosecond nonradiative decay of excited singlet states. Computed potential energy hypersurfaces (PEHs) for both isomers rationalize these data, pointing to a deep S 1 minimum for anti-B 18H 22 and a conical intersection (CI) between its S 0 and S 1 states that lies 0.51 e…