Biography

Dr. Wolfgang Streitenberger is the Adviser to the Director General of the Directorate-General for Regional Policy and Urban Development at the European Commission in Brussels. He holds a PhD degree in political sciences as well as a Master’s degree in economics.

Before his current position, Streitenberger acted as the Head of European Commission Representation to Austria as well as the Adviser to the Director General of the DG for Information Society at the European Commission. In reference to his teaching and scientific activity, he has lectured in institutes, universities and seminars as well as carrying out regular speaking all over Europe about EU Regional Policy topics, EU ICT policy and Communications. In addition, he is the author/editor of several regular and one-off publications.

The EU Regional Policy – Economic Policy and Cultural Diplomacy in Same Time

A Lecture by Dr. Wolfgang Streitenberger, Senior Advisor, Directorate-General for Regional Policy and Urban Development, European Commission

Thank you very much. Good afternoon ladies and gentleman, thank you for the very warm welcome, I’m impressed about myself and that’s already a good start for this afternoon.

It’s not only an interesting conference because of its subject matter, it’s interesting and challenging for me because I intentionally wanted to check whether there are links between what I’m responsible for, EU regional policy, and the general topic of today, cultural diplomacy.

Usually I think that like me you would say what the heck is the connection between regional policy and cultural policy or cultural diplomacy, well this is exactly this that I wanted to tackle. I chose regional policy because it is an important policy, not only in political but also in monetary terms.

Around 35 percent of the annual budget of the European Union is devoted and spent for those subject matters, regional policy. The second block equally large, about 34-35 percent, is spent for agricultural diplomacy and rural development so we can say that this is an important European policy. I mean if I speak of 35 percent of the EU budget is in cash terms 330 billion euros for the next seven years and that’s about 147 billion a year.

What I have to say at the beginning as Mr Donfried has already indicated, I’m here as an official of the European commission, yes indeed, and I will try and explain to you regional policy which is my field of responsibility but I couldn’t find any documents or references to show what our bosses say on that, the commissioners, the council, the parliament, nothing.

So there is no official document I can refer to, never the less I want to speak from 20-25 minutes on it so I have to say that I am doing it on my private behalf I’ll express my private opinion. As there is no official opinion on it if some of my bosses said can you please prove what you have said I would say no, it’s my own ideas and my own speculations. But I have the feeling that I am not so far off from what other senior officials would think about the subject matter.

So I can give you the answer to the questions about links between regional policy and cultural policy right away, yes I think that there are aspects of our regional policy not all the regional policy but aspects of the regional policy that can be interpreted as cultural policy and cultural diplomacy. Some aspects of our regional policy request for its preparation and implementation a certain amount of cultural diplomacy, you do not want to just throw away on the heads of the states or the citizens

But before I start to deal with this rather exotic topic I think that it would be helpful if I recall a little bit of what the EU regional policy is before I will dare to elaborate on how I came to the conclusion that it is not only an economic policy but also a cultural and diplomatic policy. That the disparities of economic and social development of the European regions should be reduced was already written into the founding treaties in 1957 but it was only 1973 when the first oil shock brutally stopped the years of economic miracle, the boom years that the EU set up a budget for its regional policy, so 73.

It’s interesting to note that this coincided with the enlargement of the UK, Ireland and Denmark in the same year. Some say that it even was caused by this enlargement particularly the deep economic transformation crisis in Britain in the 70’s when the all the traditional industries broke down. In Britain the 70’s gave the regional policies a strong push in the course of the year several principles which still are valid have been developed for this policy.

First the EU regional policy subsidised financially concrete projects in a wide variety of fields of activities that contribute to the positive development of the region.  Secondly the form of subsidy almost entirely is grants, a gift. Thirdly according to the principles conditionality the EU never completely finances a project, there always has to exist a national public or private co-financing tool. Fourth the selection of projects and its concrete implementation is done by the authorities of the member states. Not pass but they have to fulfil selection criteria policy priorities and rules for the implementation which are set up by us the European Commission and accepted by the member states.

This way to realise our regional policy on the ground we call shared management. The fifth principle, the focus of spending from our structural funds the monetary endowment of our regional policy is on the less developed regions of the EU but projects contributing to certain regional disparities also in advanced regions can be funded, thus our regional policy is not a simple form of redistribution from the rich to the poor or a social policy, no it is an investment policy which is based on a solidarity.

Clearly the net payer countries receive less from the regional policy than what they pay for it and vice versa. For many years’ projects in the fields of infrastructure, roads, highways, railways, airports, ports, pipelines were predominant as a result of the EU enlargement think of the 80’s Spain and Portugal and the 2000’s in central and Eastern European countries where you had a huge gap compared to the level of development and infrastructure in the old member states. So naturally regional policy spending focus on helping them catch up with their infrastructures but projects in many other fields where and are still eligible too.

But before I go into that in more detail, let me hold on here a moment and draw your attention to some important aspects in relation to our conferences topic. The goal of our regional policy is the reduction of differences in the social economic development of our regions in that way it is an economic policy, but strengthening the weaker regions and helping them to catch up to the advanced regions  is not the sole purpose. The ultimate goal is to increase the cohesion between Europe’s regions. Cohesion is a value in its own and therefore even the old wording of two treaties to the Lisbon treaty confirm our obligation to territorial cohesion.

In my understanding this is a value, and this is a cultural value if you allow me to use culture in its wider meaning and there seems to be a typical European cultural value. We find considerable differences of social economic development in other parts of the world too but they do not have anything similar to the regional policy to reduce them. Not because they would not be able to do so but because they do not want to do so they follow other values, take the United States of America, Russia, China, Brasil and India to name large territories without anything comparable with our regional policy. In many countries outside of Europe our regional policy therefore finds considerable interest and we are in dialogue with a number of them about our experiences and our philosophy which is behind this regional policy.

One main element of this philosophy is the region itself, naturally there are differences between EU member states in the traditions concerning regions, what is a region and in each member state that is different. In some states it is a very old tradition to have regions like in my country, in Austria sites book to hold celebrate thousand year anniversaries. Imagine a thousand years with the same borders existing in Europe. In others it is a renewed tradition or even a quite young one but all over Europe it is a common idea to have something between the level of cities and villages and the on the one hand on the level of the state, the national level on the other hand.

Regions in most EU member states are the result of long historical, cultural and linguistic development. Most regions define themselves from a historic and cultural point of view, and naturally other factors such as geography play a role to and these historic and cultural elements which make out a region usually are totally interlinked and inseparable from each other.

With regions as core transmitters of the EU regional policy you have another proof I think for my hypothesis namely that EU regional policy is an economic and cultural policy at the same time. The EU is not only ready to take regions as a target area for the implementation of its social and economic development policy we are also ready to accept the member states definition of region, according to their own criteria. It’s not we who say what is a region, they say it, which are I repeat in most historic cultural definitions. An EU region only has to have a population between 800,000 and 3 million people but apart from these limits we do not prescribe anything else in the member states when they are defining regions.

The result of this approach which integrates culture as a value into an economic policy is that we have currently 273 regions, very diverse regions, which are the target of our regional policy. For Germany it is the (speaks in German), in Belgium it is two provinces, in the UK it is the counties or groups of counties. Also the fact that the EU accepts this variety highlights the high respect it attaches to the national autonomy and the historical cultural traditions in each member state,

Another element of the philosophy behind our regional policy is the value of solidarity, all EU member states have agreed that for financing more projects in less developed regions then in already advanced ones we need the readiness of net payer countries to finance more than they themselves get out of this policy. What is behind it? It is solidarity, we can count on their understanding and acceptance of solidarity as a cultural value which is underlining this net payer position and justifying it to respective populations which are taxpayers and have to pay for it.

Another cultural value namely territorial cohesion of all people, regions and states of the EU sometimes I think that even behind this value of cohesion hidden another cultural value namely the idea of living in harmony and peace, lasting peace. Harmony and peace which could be heavily in danger, please imagine if the cohesion of the EU is weakened, if difference in social and economic development gets too large. It sounds probably strange to you that I have introduced the value harmony when living together as one of the ultimate goals of regional policy but please just think on the other big political entities like the United States.

There if a certain area the economic development falls back it is expected that people will leave from where they have lived and move to other places where they can work, where they can find work. Whether somebody has lived in this placed for 25 or his family has been there for three generations is not regarded as relevant. Also of no relevance in the United States are the difficulties somebody faces when being forced to move from one corner of the United States to the opposite one. In Europe clearly we follow another approach which is not only respected but even enhanced by the regional policy, it is the respect of the fact that in Europe people are rooted in their regions, rooted to the cultural identity of their regions and they regard themselves as being members contributing to the regional identities they are coming from.

Let me now leave this field of philosophical considerations and once more provide private thoughts and go back to our concrete regional policy. I have mentioned that not so long ago it was focused on investments to improve the different infrastructures and thus increase cohesion but since some years regional development projects in a wide variety of activities can be funded if they are, and now I quote, ‘strengthening research and innovation, enhancing access to and use of ICT, fostering the competitiveness of SME’s, supporting a shift towards a low carbon economy, promoting climate change adaption, promoting social inclusion, combating poverty and discrimination, investing in training and education for skills, preserving and protecting the environment. Within this last mentioned priority there is a sub priority which is worded conserving, protecting, promoting and developing cultural and natural heritage.

This allows us to financially support projects of the classic cultural policy and diplomacy as for instance the renovation of historical buildings, the modernisation of construction of museums, theatres, libraries and the maintenance of archaeological sites, probably you have heard about our efforts to help the Italians to renovate the archaeological site of Pompeii and the renovation of historic city centres can also be supported within the so called urban dimension of our regional policy.

With these few examples I hope I could illustrate what we mean when we are ready to projects which protect or develop the cultural heritage. Naturally these frequently have had a very positive impact on the development of a regions tourism and anyway it will contribute to the cultural identity and the identity of all such regions.

Another point is that a certain amount of cultural diplomacy is needed to implement or regional policy efficiently and to have it implemented efficiently by our member states. You remember that we have left the implementation of regional policy to the member states administrations according to the principle of shared management.

What is needed to realise this, well first and above all adequate administrative structures, capacities and skills have to exist before anything else can be started and this frequently is not the case to a sufficient extent and in sufficient quality, especially in new member states problems in that regard and still can be found frequently as a result of the administrative structures comparable to the ones which exist in the old member states.

This is not the fault of one of the new member states it is the result of 50 years of communist dictatorships which eradicated western administrative traditions and adequate structures and as a consequence of that we had to and still do support the build-up and the improvement of institutional capacities of partner authorities and stakeholders and efficient public administrations.

This runs under the name of technical assistance our support measures in that regard request a lot of public diplomacy on both sides, from us and from the receivers from the countries concerned because what we do want to bring about is a cultural change, a change in administrative cultures which means at the end a change of behaviour and a change of minds of administrators, of people responsible for implementing regional development programs. Naturally a lot of our support money goes into investments of physical nature, administrative buildings but probably even more goes into consultancy of administrations, analysis and studies which are necessary, training of staff to obtain the necessary skills. To give some examples, technical assistance as part of our regional policy support measures and therefore in my eyes is based and connected to cultural diplomacy.

To come to the last part of our regional policy which at the same time is an economic policy and cultural diplomacy namely the European territorial cooperation, under this title we support financially the core operation between partners from different regions who want to implement a joint project which is positive for the development of these regions participating.

Why do we support such co-operations? Because we want to reduce regional disparities and to increase cohesion between regions, cohesion is a cultural value as I have mentioned before because we could state that co-operations doesn’t exist across borders, frequently we can state in Europe a certain tendency of self-isolation of regions, an inward looking tendency, each region wants to do it alone, like Frank Sinatra and do it my way. As a result we face the danger that the wheel will be reinvented in the same regions at the same time which are unaware of what each other are doing.

What is lacking obviously is the readiness and the ability to learn from each other’s best practises and results and even problems and under the European territorial co-operation it is our goal to increase this readiness and the ability to cooperate by realising joint development projects, by offering financial support we try and give an incentive to.

We can offer this form of support to three types of operation, first the cross border cooperation between partners coming from regions separated by a national border, in the last 7 years we have had 53 such cross border cooperation programs with examples found between France and Italy, Hungary and Romania, Denmark and Germany. The budget available was 5.6 billion euros, to compare to the overall policy not so much but 5.6 billion euros for such a specialized program is quite a good budget.

Secondly the transnational cooperation in 2007-2013 we had 13 such transnational programs with a budget of 1.8 billion euros this is cooperation between actors which are located in regions forming larger geographical areas but which are based on historic links and cultural identity like the Alpine area. There is something in common between an Austrian and a gentleman from northern Italy and another from eastern France, the alpine identity, the Mediterranean space, the Atlantic coast area, and the south European space to name some of these 13 transnational programs.

The third form of cooperation of regions which we support is exchanging experience between regional and local bodies in different countries wherever in the EU they are located, we even support between a region in southern Portugal and Eastern Poland.

Naturally these three ways of cooperation between regions which form our European Territorial Cooperation will be continued in the current new programming period from 2014 to 2020. Also because it’s probably one of our most European programs, after all we support the coming closer of actors from different regions and different member states which in itself is furthering European integration. That people from both sides of a national border work together in order to strengthen cohesion between European people is a cultural value to and in that way European Territorial cooperation policies is not only and economic but cultural diplomacy too.

My closing remark because I do not want to waste time is that I indicate that you should not think I’ve forgotten that of macro regional strategies, that Europe and the European Union use promoting the cooperation of concrete projects dealing with common challenges, common to a certain macro region. What is a macro region? It is based on the historic cultural definition the members give themselves and I pick out one which is closest to me myself which is the Danube space. Macro regional strategy targets the geographic area by the river that is also heavily defined by cultural factors if I may remember if I remember that 10 of its 16 members states up until 1918 formed the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in that way you have a very strong cultural and political basis of something which is very new namely to support macro regional cooperation.

Ladies and Gentleman, with that I want to stop and I hope that my theories are not out of this world and that you can at least share these ideas that even a strong economic policy has hidden cultural elements.

Thank you