I participated in the last few days in the Informal Meeting of EU Culture Ministers in Angers, France.
Among other things, the main topic of the meeting was Cultural Heritage. Plans for the management, protection and promotion of the common European cultural heritage, the establishment of a cultural label for Europe, more effective protection against looting, theft and theft of antiquities abroad, the policy of a single digitisation of heritage and the creation of a common European repository, etc.
I was even pleased to note the very good work that is being done in our country in the field of digitisation in cooperation with the UNESCO Chair of the CUT and Europeana.
Of course, it was mainly about antiquities and monuments. This brings us back to the realization that in Europe, in Brussels or elsewhere, it is not possible for the Ministers of Culture to discuss together and plan joint actions for ancient monuments, heritage, antiquities and here in Nicosia these are a matter of... transport and works. It is not possible!
I am glad that in a week from today the Parliament will decide and give a solution to this piecemeal approach and the displacement of antiquities in... transport, with a logic that goes back to the colonial era. As is well known, we are not saying that antiquities should come under a Ministry of Education and Culture. But to find, together with the entire cultural heritage, a separate home of their own: in the Deputy Ministry of Culture, under the supervision of the Presidency of the Republic.
I hope and expect that the Parliament will approve this step forward both for our cultural heritage and for culture in general.
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