5 May 2022

Thursday 5 May 2022, Hearing of Cultura Italiae and Cultura Europae. Speakers: Angelo Argento, President of Cultura Italiae, and Valerio Valla, Secretary General of Cultura Europae.

Summary of the hearing

As pointed out at the beginning of the hearing by President Argento, Cultura Italiae promotes concrete initiatives and projects aimed at representing Italy’s merits and excellence, advancing the idea of culture as an economic driver of the Country's system.

From this shared vision of culture as an engine of development, not only ethical but also economic, comes the proposal to seek and build a common European cultural identity, which respects the past and takes into account the differences between the Member Countries.

President Argento underlined it is necessary for national culture to take a step forward towards the creation of a common and shared European culture, encouraging contamination. Examples of this process could be the experimentation of European training classes (e.g. cinema) and mandatory interchange paths (e.g. Erasmus) for teachers.

Cultura Italiae calls for the existing instruments to be strengthened.

Valerio Valla, Secretary General of Cultura Europae, broke down this effort into the concrete objectives listed below: strengthening the resources allocated to the sector (taking into account that EU 2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework resources are inadequate); greater coordination between direct funding and Structural Funds resources; establishment of a steering committee on the sector; strengthening the resources allocated to the sector also within the Horizon Programme.