Franceschini now proposes European Netflix: "EU get a platform for culture"

Minister of Cultural Heritage Dario Franceschini is back on one of his warhorses, the so-called “Netflix of culture,” but now the titular of the Collegio Romano is thinking in an expanded perspective, as he launches the proposal for Europe as well: theEuropean Union, according to the minister, should in fact equip itself with a digital platform for cultural content.

“The whole of Europe,” Franceschini said today, speaking at a meeting of European culture ministers held by video conference, “is the biggest producer of cultural content. In an increasingly digital context, accelerated by the pandemic, the time has come to build an EU platform that offers European culture online. We have done it in Italy, funding with 10 million euros a public platform that will start in the coming months that will offer all Italian culture online: prose, theater, dance, music, concerts. But it is clear that a whole other force would come from the European Union’s choice to build a platform that offers European culture, capable of making us compete with the giants of the net.”

“Lepidemic,” the minister added later, “has made policymakers realize what we culture ministers already knew very well: the centrality of cultural policies in the process of European integration and the incredible opportunities that investing in culture brings. Now is the time to make culture central to the policy choices of the European Union. In recent months we have helped our artists and our institutions and creative industries to overcome the emergency. The significant increase in the resources of the Creative Europe program is important in this regard. Now it is important to engage on Recovery, to make sure that culture is central in national choices on the use of these resources.”

Franceschini then underscored the need for a European Pact for Reading, a strong commitment by the European Union and member countries to promote reading, adopting tools to support and protect the independent bookstore sector through economic measures, tax relief, and support and training for the publishing profession. The proposal found support from Culture Commissioner Marija Gabriel and a number of countries including France, Spain, Germany, Lithuania, Slovenia, Greece, Cyprus and Romania. Finally, Franceschini concluded his speech by recalling that Italy is now engaged in the G20, whose presidency it has assumed from today for one year. These issues will be at the center of the G20 of Culture 2021, which will be held in May under the Italian presidency, placing the emphasis on the need to foster the emergence of an international operational network of specialists to intervene to protect cultural heritage in crisis areas, modeled on the blue helmets of culture set up by Italy within the Unite4Heritage Unesco program.

Franceschini now proposes European Netflix: "EU get a platform for culture"

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