Council conclusions

on reinforcing intercultural exchanges through the mobility of artists and cultural and creative professionals, and through multilingualism in the digital era

(2022/C 160/07)

THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

CONSIDERING THAT:

1. Cultural and linguistic diversity is intrinsic to the European Union and its fundamental values. It contributes to the blossoming of creativity, creative freedom, cultural exchanges and to the variety and quality of the cultural and artistic offer for all Europeans. It promotes mutual understanding and respect for cultures and languages, and it is a shared heritage, a wealth, a strength, and a distinctive characteristic of relations within Europe and with the rest of the world;

2. It is essential to encourage mobility and exchanges between European artists, cultural organisations and cultural and creative professionals, both at national and European level, as enshrined in the Creative Europe programme, in particular in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. It is also essential to support access to culture and the circulation of cultural works within Europe, thereby enriching our lives individually and collectively;

3. The mobility of artists and cultural and creative professionals should be facilitated not only amongst European cultural organisations, but also amongst individual artists and professionals, as experienced through the i-Portunus pilot projects since 2018. Such mobility enables them to co-work and co-create, network, acquire new competences, skills and techniques, seek inspiration, reach new audiences and new markets, and access new career opportunities.

4. The mobility of artists and cultural and creative professionals can usefully draw on opportunities such as residency schemes and on the European networks of institutions or festivals. It can be facilitated notably through comprehensive, accurate and multilingual information about existing mobility schemes, available assistance, and programmes that take into account the overall mobility context;

5. European mobility schemes contribute to establishing and fostering partnerships that are a prerequisite when applying for Creative Europe cooperation projects funding;

6. An ambitious policy of cultural and linguistic diversity should fully integrate sustainability issues and draw on technological innovation, including in the digital field;

7. Multilingualism ( 1 ) fosters cultural diversity and creativity, including in the field of audiovisual, media and digital content, and allows broader access to different cultural approaches, works, knowledge and ideas. Language competence (plurilingualism ( 2 ) ) constitutes an important asset in a globalised context and contributes to professional mobility and exchanges in the cultural and creative sectors;

8. Professional translators, interpreters and language educators play a significant role in the circulation of artworks, knowledge and ideas, particularly for less widespread European languages, thus supporting European cultural diversity on a daily basis;

9. Language and semantic web technologies can support multilingualism and cross-language communication; help language learning, teaching and awareness; and offer useful tools for professional translators, bearing in mind that such tools cannot fully substitute human translation and therefore their output needs always to be carefully monitored and adapted for accuracy;

I. MOBILITY OF ARTISTS AND CULTURAL AND CREATIVE PROFESSIONALS

INVITES THE COMMISSION TO:

10. Ensure a wider access of artists and cultural and creative professionals to EU mobility grants within Creative Europe via a stable scheme at European level for individual and collective cultural mobility, both within the European Union and beyond, in furtherance of the dynamics created through the i-Portunus pilot projects;

11. Explore ways to facilitate the development of an accessible, interactive and multilingual information portal, building as far as possible on existing initiatives and taking inspiration from existing portals such as EURAXESS ( 3 ) , CulturEU ( 4 ) and others, which would provide comprehensive and up-to-date information about mobility opportunities and grants available from Member States and at European level, for individuals, groups of individuals and cultural organisations, where relevant, as well as support the networking of organisations, venues and those seeking mobility;

12. Contribute to the support and networking of mobility information services for artists and cultural and creative professionals;

13. Ensure that European mobility schemes take into account gender equality and the specific needs of emerging artists and artists from disadvantaged groups or with fewer opportunities, who usually benefit less from existing mobility schemes, and provide them with tailored support;

14. Actively promote and foster linguistic diversity in mobility schemes for art students, artists and cultural and creative professionals, both for physical and virtual mobility, building where relevant on existing models such as the Online Linguistic Support ( 5 ) platform developed for Erasmus+ and the European Solidarity Corps;

INVITES MEMBER STATES TO:

15. Develop or continue mobility schemes, alongside EU initiatives or programmes, to facilitate mobility and exchanges between European artists and cultural and creative professionals as much as possible;

16. Promote co-operation between cultural authorities and those responsible for issues related to mobility, for example the issuance of visas, in order to explore possible options for taking into account the particularities of the mobility of artists and cultural and creative professionals;

17. Encourage work to facilitate cross-border mobility by reducing the administrative burden as regards for example social security, insurance, housing, customs or taxation, while better taking into account the specificities of cultural and creative professions, and drawing where appropriate on the upcoming results of the OMC ( 6 ) group on the status and working conditions of artists and cultural and creative professionals;

18. Promote the provision, support and strengthening of mobility information services for artists and cultural and creative professionals, in order to assist them with mobility formalities, and in particular to provide them with information on the applicable regulatory framework, by liaising with the relevant authorities;

INVITES THE MEMBER STATES AND THE COMMISSION, WITHIN THEIR RESPECTIVE AREAS OF COMPETENCE AND IN LINE WITH THE SUBSIDIARITY PRINCIPLE, TO:

19. Facilitate the mobility of artists and cultural professionals, notably by addressing their specific travel needs, such as transporting music instruments or art material, while taking into account diversity and inclusiveness;

20. Promote mobility programmes which, notwithstanding their level of governance, take into account all travel costs and adequately integrate ecological issues, while considering the Union’s geographical diversity and characteristics, and in particular promote: — blended mobility by using the potential of virtual exchanges, with due regard to the participants’ linguistic diversity and the intrinsic value of physical mobility, and — the use of less polluting means of transport, without ruling out cases where air transport is the only or a necessary option, such as for outermost regions (7), overseas countries and territories (8), islands and insular areas;

21. Enhance the use of tools to support the lifelong learning ( 9 ) of cultural and creative professionals, in particular by reinforcing synergies with and between the Erasmus+ and Creative Europe programmes, to better take into account the specificities of the cultural and creative sectors;

II. MULTILINGUALISM IN THE DIGITAL ERA, IN CONNECTION WITH ISSUES OF SOCIAL COHESION AND EUROPEAN CITIZENSHIP

INVITES THE COMMISSION TO:

22. Strengthen the mainstreaming of multilingualism in the Union’s programmes;

23. Promote an EU-wide strategic approach for multilingualism in the digital environment;

24. Continue to seize the opportunities offered by language technologies to ensure high-quality and broader translation of its websites and other communication tools into all the official languages of the EU ( 10 )

25. Offer a multilingual information space on European language technologies and related support and resources, including European schemes for plurilingualism and translation, in conjunction with bodies such as the European Federation of National Institutions for Language (EFNIL);

26. Promote responsible and ethical data governance and privacy by design in the efforts to strengthen languages through technology;

27. Deepen its cooperation with national and international organisations active in the fields of language learning, digital technology, and cultural and linguistic diversity, […] especially with the Council of Europe and its European Centre for Modern Languages, as well as UNESCO;

INVITES THE MEMBER STATES AND THE COMMISSION, WITHIN THEIR RESPECTIVE AREAS OF COMPETENCE, AND IN LINE WITH THE SUBSIDIARITY PRINCIPLE, TO:

28. Promote cultural and linguistic diversity and the circulation of cultural works through all media translation, including where relevant by taking advantage of the latest digital technologies, by: a) Promoting translation as a vocation in education, starting at school by using translation as one of the practices to improve writing and linguistic skills; b) Encouraging quality initial training in translation for the cultural and creative sectors, and lifelong training for professional translators, taking into account the growing use of digital technologies; c) Reinforcing the attractiveness of the profession of translation by offering increased visibility and recognition; d) Encouraging better working conditions, fair remuneration and fair contractual practices for translators, especially in the cultural and creative sectors, irrespective of the language combinations and with due regard to the autonomy of social partners; e) Strengthening existing public support, notably by fostering networking between professionals, encouraging collaboration between relevant organisations providing grants for translation, and targeting funding for translation from and into foreign languages at national and European level; f) Continuing exchanges on multilingualism and on all media translation in the digital era in the appropriate fora, covering all cultural, creative and knowledge sectors;

29. inter alia through awareness campaigns such as the European Day of Languages and the development and improvement of digital tools, and notably: Promote plurilingualism in lifelong learning ( 11 ) through awareness campaigns such as the European Day of Languages and the development and improvement of digital tools, and notably: a) Provide more opportunities for children and youth, including those with fewer opportunities, to engage with other languages and cultures, as appropriate and in complement to the learning of the official languages of the Member States; b) Develop language skills among students in cultural fields, artists and cultural and creative professionals; c) Facilitate, for migrants, and particularly younger migrants, the learning of their host country’s official languages, while valuing linguistic diversity;

30. Support, where relevant, the research and development of language technologies for European citizens and companies in order to foster intercultural exchanges and improve analytic apacity, building on already existing resources and platforms, and notably: a) Promote the creation of the European Language Data Space, as a European exchange platform facilitating, for entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, and public authorities, the creation, collection, (re)-use and sharing of language resources, tools and models in full compliance with the EU values of privacy, transparency and trust; b) Support the establishment of multilingual terminological databases and resources and broader use of existing platforms, such as IATE, as well as European language and multilingualism infrastructures, such as CLARIN ERIC, with a view to widening the collection, cleansing of, and access to digital data on language, both textual and oral; c) Encouraging the development, use, and monitoring where appropriate of automated translation systems, including the eTranslation service for all official languages of the EU, and other language tools at European level, seeking synergies with the European Language Resources Coordination (ELRC) network, the European Language Grid (ELG) project and the future European Language Data Space; d) Foster the convergence of research and innovation schemes, and the identification of areas of application, and better connect research to the needs of companies and citizens in the area of language technologies for translation, multilingual and analytic processing; e) Raise the awareness of companies on the benefits of using language technologies to communicate in several official languages of the EU; f) Promote greater involvement of professional translators in the development of digital translation technologies;

31. Promote multilingual access to digitised European content through new technologies by enriching metadata and by providing multilingual experiences in terms of editorial content and user interfaces; in this regard, build on the research and work done by digital platforms such as Europeana;

32. Exchange best practices and take stock of the implementation of these conclusions by 2025.

(1) Defined as the presence or coexistence of several languages within a given society or territory, or on a given medium.

(2) Defined as the ability of an individual to use several languages.

(3) https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/

(4) https://ec.europa.eu/culture/funding/cultureu-funding-guide

(5) https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/resources-and-tools/online-linguistic-support

(6) Open Method of Coordination. OMC groups are established in the framework of the Work Plan for Culture 2019-2022 (OJ C 460, 21.12.2018, p. 12).

(7) As identified in Article 349 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

(8) As identified in Article 198 and Annex II of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

(9) As defined in point 1 of Article 2 of Regulation (EU) 2021/817 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 May 2021 establishing Erasmus+: the Union Programme for education and training, youth and sport and repealing Regulation (EU) No 1288/2013 (OJ L 189, 28.5.2021, p. 1).

(10) As defined in Council Regulation No 1 determining the languages to be used by the European Economic Community (OJ 17, 6.10.1958, p. 385), as amended.

(11) In line with the Council Recommendation of 22 May 2019 on a Comprehensive Approach to the Teaching and Learning of Languages (OJ C 189, 5.6.2019, p. 15).