The Commission
presents its report on the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue
("EYID" or "the Year") 2008 established in Decision N°
1983/2006/EC. The report presents the conclusions and recommendations drawn
from the external evaluation of the Year and the Commission's response to
those findings.
Evaluation: the evaluation of the Year was very positive in a number of
aspects. The Year was relevant to stakeholder needs and to the challenges
identified around cultural diversity in Europe. Resources were efficiently
managed, a result in part of a "dual approach", which combined a
strong European-level communication campaign and a small number of flagship
projects with decentralised initiatives and one national project per Member
State . The Year achieved increased general awareness of intercultural
dialogue issues through a critical mass of events, successfully mobilised
stakeholders and sparked a high volume of relevant activities organised
without direct funding.
More doubts
were raised concerning the degree to which the Year was able to impact on
general public attitudes in this complex field. Stakeholder engagement with
the Year was very strong in the culture sector and to some degree in
education, but fell short of the ambitious cross-sectoral mobilisation which
was the goal. The absence of more widespread structural changes (to
administrations, for example) raises doubts about the solidity of the basis
for sustainable follow-up activity on intercultural dialogue.
The evaluators
addressed 11 recommendations to the Commission and six to Member
States. These include the following:
- provide
continuing support for structured dialogue with civil society, through
platforms for example;
- take steps
to ensure continuing and systematic dissemination and exploitation of
the outputs and results of the Year, for example by supporting the
continuation of relevant features of the EYID website and building on
the success of the photographic competition “Cultures on My Street”
through identifying opportunities to use the images in connection with a
range of EU and national activities as appropriate;
- consider
commissioning further research in particular on the impact of ICD in schools,
given the strong focus on this during the Year and the likelihood of
longer-term impacts in a number of countries;
- in
particular consider measures to maintain the momentum achieved in the
education field during the Year, for example by promoting and
facilitating transfer of knowledge on the pedagogy of ICD, curriculum
development and teacher training;
- consider
ways to promote and stimulate the transfer of learning from the Year
between Member States, through working groups at EU level including representatives
of governments, civil society and other stakeholders for example;
- establish a
monitoring and reporting framework to allow benchmarking of progress on
ICD in Member States, for example through existing monitoring and
reporting processes in the fields of education and integration of
migrants;
- consider
strengthening the ICD strand within Community programmes through the
process of annual calls for proposals in order better to support
co-funding of thematic projects, notably those with an emphasis on
cross-sectoral cooperation between education, culture and youth on one
hand and public services and/or active citizenship on the other;
- work with
other relevant parts of the European Commission including in the field
of youth, lifelong learning, employment and education to ensure ICD is
operationalised more explicitly and systematically in EU programmes;
including making available to other parts of the Commission learning
from the design and implementation of the Year;
- continue to
work with key international organisations, in particular the Council of
Europe and UEFA, building on the current effective strategic
partnerships
- consider
ways to improve progress in some of the areas which lacked visibility during
the Year – sport, disadvantaged communities and public services –
including identifying appropriate partners in government and civil
society with which to work;
- in terms of
future European Years, consider the following: how a systematic
three-year cycle for European Years could be embedded in the process
(preparation-implementation-follow-up), to ensure maximum preparedness
and momentum; and how the objectives of future years could be made more
measurable.
Recommendations: the evaluators also addressed 6 recommendations to Member
States, given that lead responsibility for many of the policies concerned
lies at national, or in some cases regional and local, level. These
recommendations propose that each Member State should:
- develop a
national action plan for ICD, underpinned by an evidence base of
research and statistics;
- develop
guidelines to help formulate ICD strategies in fields such as sport,
public services and active citizenship;
- take better
account of ICD across different fields, including public service design
and delivery, in order to promote community cohesion and social
inclusion;
- help
increase capacity of civil society organisations able to address ICD,
especially where the NGO base is weak, in particular by mapping the
sector, developing networks and providing training;
- contribute
to EU-level fora and working groups which share knowledge, steer policy
development and increase the profile of ICD in national and EU
policy-making;
- consider
establishing a national system for monitoring and reviewing progress on
ICD, together with appropriate indicators.
Conclusions: the Commission agrees with the overall assessment of the Year
made by the evaluators. The Year was most successful in raising awareness of
ICD issues, notably among policy makers, and in mobilising stakeholders,
above all in the arts and culture sector. Its impact on attitudes towards ICD
proved harder to measure, given the much longer timeframe needed for profound
societal changes to occur and the complex set of factors which influence
these attitudes.
Follow-up to
the Year requires the combined efforts of the Commission, other EU
institutions, Member States and civil society. The Commission will give
priority to the evaluators' recommendations and will concentrate its
follow-up on:
- encouraging
cooperation and transferring learning between Member States and between
experts in different policy sectors relevant to ICD. The Open Method of
Coordination will be a main vehicle for this type of cooperation and for
using the results and the outputs of the Year. Learning will also be
shared with sectors which were under-represented in the Year. Projects
such as Intercultural Cities, a joint initiative with the Council of
Europe, or the proposed network of Romani Studies experts are
opportunities to foster precisely this learning transfer and
cooperation;
- providing
funding support for projects and initiatives on intercultural dialogue.
Preparation of the next generation of EU programmes will be the
opportunity to consult widely on options for supporting ICD, including
through support for cooperation between policy sectors. The Commission
will also aim to ensure that the priority given to ICD in certain
Programmes is made clearly operational;
- furthering
work in the education field, where initiatives on key competences for
lifelong learning and on teacher training, for example, are closely
related to ICD.
The
recommendations which have been put forward should help ensure that ICD
remains high on the EU policy agenda. The increased awareness of the need for
a coherent cross-sectoral approach generated by the Year is a sound basis on
which to build further cooperation towards reaching this objective.