CULTURE PROGRAMME 2007-2013 (11572/04)
Letter from David Lammy MP, Minister for
Culture, Department for Culture, Media and Sport to the Chairman
I am writing to bring your Committee up to date
with the Culture 2007 programme.
We believed this had been released from scrutiny,
however, closer investigation has revealed that in fact, although
your Committee agreed to the UK reaching a partial political agreement
in November 2005, the financial aspects of the programme were
still held under scrutiny.
This situation may have been exacerbated by
the fact that the DCMS Scrutiny Coordinator post was vacant for
a period of five months at the beginning of 2006.
However, this does not excuse our failure to
update your committee on the progress of this proposal. As you
are aware DCMS is currently undertaking a full review of how its
scrutiny correspondence is dealt with. The review has highlighted
instances where we have failed to update you. For this I can only
apologise and offer my assurance that officials at the Department
for Culture, Media and Sport will ensure this does not occur again.
An update on the developments of the Culture
2007 programme is as follows:
Following an agreement (on 4 April 2006) on
the Financial Perspective (2007-2013) which allowed the budget
for this programme to be set, a full political agreement was reached
at the Culture Council held on 18 May 2006 and the common position
adopted on 18 July 2006.
A budget of €400 million for the Culture
programme over the period 2007-13 has been agreed. This is a small
increase in real terms in comparison to the current total Programme
expenditure (after account has been taken of enlargement and the
inclusion of strands 2 and 3, which did not previously fall within
the Culture Programme). This level of funding is consistent with
the agreed Financial Perspective. Also, in comparison with the
programmes that preceded it, the Culture programme goes further
in the reinforcement of cultural cooperation by focusing the EU
action on three main objectives which have been identified as
having strong European added value: the trans-national mobility
of people working in the cultural sector, the trans-national circulation
of works of art as well as of artistic and cultural products and
intercultural dialogue.
The European Parliament second reading took
place on 25 October 2006. The Commission has accepted the three
amendments proposed by the European Parliament. These amendments
were the result of a global compromise between the European Parliament
and the Council in view of the second reading. They are in line
with the objectives of the initial proposal of the Commission.
The first amendment underlines the need already
expressed in the initial proposal to go beyond a mere project-approach
and to support the permanent activities of cultural organisations
active at the European level.
The second amendment limits the comitology procedure
to one sub-strand of the programme (ie multi-annual cooperation
projects) and is much closer to the initial proposal of the Commission
than the Council common position. The comitology procedure will
apply neither to short duration projects (strand 1.2, cooperation
measures) nor to cultural organisations (strand 2) so as to avoid
a longer internal decision-making procedure for the implementation
of the programme with no real added value.
Finally, the third amendment will reduce the
number of days between the publication of the Decision in the
Official Journal and its entry into force, from 20 to just one,
which will speed up the implementation of the programe.
The UK favoured these amendments as they support
more long term projects and reduce the amount of administration
involved. Consequently the proposal was adopted by the Council
at second reading on 11 December with the Council supporting the
EP's amendments.
I apologise again for not having previously
updated the Committee on these developments before agreement was
reached.
10 January 2007
Letter from the Chairman to David Lammy
MP
Thank you for your letter of 10 January. This
was considered by Sub-Committee G on 8 February.
We regret that your Department's misunderstanding
of the status of scrutiny of this item, led you inadvertently
to override our scrutiny when you agreed to the Commission's proposals
at the 18 May Culture Council meeting. Against this background,
we very much welcome your review of the DCMS arrangements for
handling scrutiny correspondence.
When the review is complete and your new arrangements
are in place, Simon Burton, Clerk to the EU Select Committee and
Barry Werner, Clerk to EU Sub-Committee G (Social Policy and Consumer
Affairs) would be very happy to visit DCMS to talk to your officials
about the House of Lords EU scrutiny procedures. Perhaps your
scrutiny coordinator could contact Barry if you wish to take this
forward.
Thank you for the further information you provide
in your letter about the costs of the 2007-13 cultural programme
and about the amendments to the Commission's proposals put forward
by the European Parliament.
We will list this item in our Progress of Scrutiny
document as a case of scrutiny override.
8 February 2007
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