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The Lisbon Treaty, does it matter to arts and culture in Europe? Print

The Lisbon Treaty contains a couple of modifications of interest to the cultural sector.


The Maastricht Treaty (1992) gave a legal basis to EU cultural actions and policies for the first time (the famous article 151). Aimed at ‘encouraging’, ‘supporting’ and ‘supplementing’ the actions of the Member States, ‘while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore’, the article gave some competence to the EU, but only in a ‘complementary’ form which meant that any act of harmonisation of legal and regulatory provisions of the Member States was excluded from the scope of the article. This provision is still valid today and has not been affected by the Lisbon treaty.

Also under the Maastricht Treaty, all cultural measures were agreed by a co-decision procedure shared by the European Parliament and the Council, with decisions in the Council having to be taken unanimously.

In this regard, and in the view of Culture Action Europe, Lisbon introduces an important innovation: the decision-making in the Council will now be treated under Qualified Majority Voting (QMV) as opposed to the current unanimous vote. The key impact of this could be a progressive weakening of national veto in cultural affairs, a very sensitive point. However, as there is still no possibility of harmonisation of regulation in the cultural policy area, the QMV rule will apply principally to decisions concerning the format and scope of the funding programmes.

In addition to the specific article on culture, now article 167, which on top of QMV also strengthens furthermore the role of the European Parliament, the Lisbon Treaty refers several more times to culture:

- a new point added to the Preamble, specifies that the Treaty draws:
‘inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe, from which have developed the universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law’

- the third article of the Treaty, at the third paragraph, now states that the European Union: “shall respect its rich cultural and linguistic diversity, and shall ensure that Europe's cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced”.

- in the section named “Categories and areas of the Union’s competence”, article 6, the Treaty lists various actions that the EU can take ‘to support, coordinate or supplement the
actions of the Member States’. Here the Treaty reiterates that culture is one of these areas.

- finally, article 300, paragraph 2 on the Economic and Social Committee states that:
“The Committee shall consist of representatives of organisations of employers, of the employed, and of other parties representative of civil society, notably in socio-economic, civic, professional and cultural areas.” Note that this is the first reference to cultural organisations as members of civil society. This may be an important conceptual change for the future.

Consult the full version of the Lisbon Treaty. To know more about the main changes introduced by the Lisbon Treaty, go to the Euractiv website.