Culture 2000 programme for the period 2000-2004

In its common position, the Council accepted 11 of the 31 amendments adopted by the European Parliament in its first reading. These relate to: - underlining the European nature of the programme and its benefits for European integration, - promoting creativity and professionalism in the cutural sector, - ensuring the coherence and the complementarity of the programme with other Community actions that have a cultural impact, - favouring the vertical approach (a single cultural field per action) or the horizontal approach of certain actions (associating several cultural fields). Among the Parliament's amendments not taken up by the Council were those relating to access and public participation in the programme, comitology aspects, programme evaluation and monitoring, and the European cultural poles approach. The common position maintains the budget at 167 million euros, as proposed by the Commission in its initial proposal. It also introduces a new division of the budget between the different actions of the programme (already suggested by the European Parliament), as follows: - 40% for specific actions, - 40% for integrated actions, - 10% for special cultural events, and - 10% for other expenditure related to the implementation of the programme. It states that Community support for special cultural events (other than European cultural capitals and the European cultural month) should not be less than 150,000 EUR and not more than 300,000 EUR per year. Lastly, it changed the type of committee to implement the programme proposed by the Commission to a management committee (or type IIb Committee).�