Creating and Governing Cultural Heritage in the European Union

The European Heritage Label

Tuuli Lähdesmäki, Viktorija L.A. Čeginskas, Sigrid Kaasik-Krogerus, Katja Mäkinen, Johanna Turunen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780429620805
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia europea

Creating and Governing Cultural Heritage in the European Union: The European Heritage Label provides an interdisciplinary examination of the ways in which European cultural heritage is created, communicated, and governed via the new European Heritage Label scheme.

Drawing on ethnographic field research conducted across ten countries at sitesthat have been awarded with the European Heritage Label, the authors of the book approach heritage as an entangled social, spatial, temporal, discursive, narrative, performative, and embodied process. Recognising that heritage is inherently political and used by diverse actors as a tool for re-imagining communities, identities, and borders, and for generating notions of inclusion and exclusion in Europe, the book also considers the idea of Europe itself as a narrative. Chapters tackle issues such as multilevel governance of heritage; geopolitics of border-crossings and border-making; participation and non-participation; and embodiment and affective experience of heritage.

Creating and Governing Cultural Heritage in the European Union advances heritage studies with an interdisciplinary approach that utilises and combines theories and conceptualizations from critical geopolitics, political studies, EU and European studies, cultural policy research, and cultural studies. As such, the volume will be of interest to scholars and students engaged in the study of heritage, politics, belonging, the EU, ideas, and narratives of Europe.

Part I

Governing Europe

Chapter 1

Multilevel and participatory governance of European cultural heritage in the EU

Heritage is not only a policy tool for the EU. It is also developing as a policy sector with its own initiatives, policies, and EU officials, which is increasingly addressed and governed in EU policy-making. The EU heritage sector takes a broad cross-sectoral approach, highlighted in the EU’s first major heritage-focused policy document, entitled “Towards an Integrated Approach to Cultural Heritage for Europe” (2014). In it, the European Commission presents “Europe’s cultural heritage” as an “irreplaceable repository of knowledge and a valuable resource for economic growth, employment and social cohesion”, and sums up how the “heritage sector” is in transformation in today’s Europe, as it faces diverse challenges and opportunities (EC 2014, 2–4). Since then, heritage – and cultural heritage in particular – has gained an increasingly strong foothold in EU policy, as the EU’s own exercise, Mapping of Cultural Heritage actions in European Union policies, programmes, and activities (2017), indicates. The aim of this mapping was to complement the 2014 document and lay the ground for the European Year of Cultural Heritage in 2018. The EU’s integrated approach to cultural heritage and recent heritage initiatives have produced broad cooperation between different directorates-general. As one of our interviewees (E4) from the Commission told us, collaboration was particularly intensive during the European Year of Cultural Heritage and generated unforeseen enthusiasm among EU officials.

The development of cultural heritage as an EU policy sector has not (only) been an EU-led process. Certain member states and European transnational organizations have pushed cultural heritage up the EU agenda. Member states have had a crucial role in this process through their EU presidencies since 2010, when Belgium first brought cultural heritage to the spotlight. The Declaration of Bruges (2010), subtitled “Cultural Heritage: A Resource for Europe: The Benefits of Interaction”, highlighted cultural heritage’s links with various societal sectors and noted how cultural heritage is still managed and preserved on national and/or regional levels, as the EU has limited regulating powers over culture. The declaration emphasized a closer connection between management and preservation of European cultural heritage “vis-à-vis the developments, challenges and opportunities which present themselves within European policy” and suggested incorporating cultural heritage better into the general policy of the EU (Declaration of Bruges 2010, 2). After Belgium, Lithuanian, Greek, and Italian EU presidencies continued to point out the theme of cultural heritage (EC 2014; also E1 and E4). This interest from member states in cultural heritage and increasing the EU’s role in it legitimized the Commission’s attempts to strengthen its heritage measures. As one of our interviewees (E1) in the Commission said, “a demand from the member states” “gave us the green light” to continue work on these attempts. The impetus for developing heritage as a policy sector is, thus, based on an interdependent interaction between national policy-makers and EU-level actors. “We needed the presidency to choose it as a priority theme”, the same interviewee noted.

Various transnational heritage organizations, such as the European Heritage Heads Forum, the European Heritage Legal Forum, and the European Heritage Alliance 3.3, have also been active in raising the profile of cultural heritage on the EU agenda and guiding approaches to it (EC 2014). Moreover, Europa Nostra, the Council of Europe, ICOMOS, and UNESCO have cooperated and interacted with the Commission on various heritage-related issues, most recently during the European Year of Cultural Heritage (2018). These organizations cannot only be seen as lobbyists but as “a kind of representative of the society that helps us to better tailor our policies”, as one of our interviewees (E4) from the Commission states. The international heritage organizations take their own initiative to impact the Commission but are also consulted by the Commission, which blurs their position as lobbyists. At the same time, their interest in advancing EU heritage policies, initiatives, and funding legitimizes the EU’s heritage-focused activities. As our interviewee (E4) put it, “you can’t create something if there is not a real request, a need from the sector” for EU heritage policy-making. The Commission has also consulted heritage scholars and academics regarding policy-preparation activities.

The emergence of EU heritage policy has an impact on the meanings and interpretations of the subsidiarity principle in the governance of culture. The EU does not aim to replace national or regional heritage administrations or control how member states handle heritage. Instead, EU heritage policy reflects both the member states’ and Commission’s views that common heritage-related challenges exist in the EU, and that sharable best practices and policy ideas should be dealt with at the EU level.

While heritage has been developed as an EU policy sector, it has also become a part of EU governance. EU heritage initiatives, such as the European Heritage Label (EHL), can be seen as practices of governing both the meanings of heritage and people – both practitioners and audiences of heritage (Lähdesmäki 2016). The EU governance of heritage is also about making Europe. Niklasson (2017, 141) has described its twofold mechanism as “making things work for Europe” by emphasizing the European significance of heritage sites, and as “making people work through Europe” by facilitating cooperation between heritage practitioners. We recognized this twofold mechanism in our data analysis. Moreover, our research of the EHL action brought forth complex power dynamics related to the EU governance of heritage.

Taking the EHL as a case, this chapter examines how European cultural heritage is governed in the EU. The data include our field research interviews with the EU actors and practitioners working at the EHL sites; our survey of EHL national coordinators; the EHL selection reports; 16 EHL applications; and EU policy documents regarding heritage in the EUR-Lex database. Close reading reveals how the decision- and policy-making, governance, power, interactions, and (hierarchical) positions of different actors are manifested and dealt with in the data. The chapter starts from a discussion on multilevel and participatory governance, followed by an analysis of the multi-directionality of EU governance of heritage. We focus on top-down/bottom-up dynamics, power relations, and tensions in the governance of the EHL and how these interact with its management and meaning-making processes. We also discuss EHL networks and how they function. Finally, we explore how the EHL is used to govern various social, societal, and political issues in Europe.

EU heritage policy – combining multilevel and participatory governance

During the past two decades, policy-making and the use of power in the diverse policy sectors in the EU have been broadly explored in terms of multilevel governance (e.g. Hooghe and Marks 2001a; Bache and Flinders 2004; DeBardeleben and Hurrelmann 2007; Piattoni 2009a; Benz 2010; Nousiainen and Mäkinen 2015). This concept refers to the increasing complexity of governance in a globalized and networked world, in which states are no longer the only or even the key actors in all processes of governance (e.g. Hooghe and Marks 2001a; Piattoni 2009a). In multilevel governance, “supranational, national, regional and local governments are enmeshed in territorially overarching policy networks” (Marks 1993, 402–403). However, multilevel governance also functions horizontally, through interaction between different territorial governing bodies and the increased interdependence between governments and non-governmental actors (Bache and Flinders 2004, 3).

The strengthening of EU integration through the Maastricht Treaty speeded up the emergence of this new mode of governance that is based on interdependent and simultaneous acts of governing at different levels. Through the subsidiarity principle introduced in the Maastricht Treaty, the EU sought to regulate the decision-making and processes of governance between the EU and state levels. The Treaty also recognized the multiple levels of governance inside the EU administration (Mäkinen 2018).

The concept of multilevel governance has been firmly established in EU studies (DeBardeleben and Hurrelmann 2007). Researchers have, however, employed it in research with various emphasis as well as identified different phases of how it has been approached in research and how this variance reflects change in the EU (Stephenson 2013). The political essence of multilevel governance has also been interpreted in various ways. Hooghe and Marks have distinguished two different modes of understanding the concept in relation to the EU. The first mode emphasizes multilevel governance as still relying on a relatively stable architecture of non-intersecting memberships between different levels, while the second one sees the relationships between the various levels as more flexible, intersecting, and variable (Hooghe and Marks 2001b; Marks and Hooghe 2003, 2004). The second mode stresses diverse networks between subnational, national, and supranational actors that blur previous demarcations between centre and periphery, state and society, and the domestic and the international (Piattoni 2009b, 163). This is where the democratic challenge of multilevel governance lies. As Piattoni (2009b, 164) noted, “creation of ad hoc networks, which may include, in a rather haphazard way, legitimately constituted deliberative assemblies together with other public and private, individual and collective actors […] moves beyond a purely representative democracy”. Multilevel governance is twofold in nature: it encourages non-governmental actors to participate in governance processes, thus increasing democracy, but simultaneously restricts democracy by complicating governance through equalizing general-purpose jurisdictions (such as national or regional governments) with special-purpose jurisdictions (such as voluntary associations, civil society organizations, and expert committees), thus creating an odd mix of ruling actors (Piattoni 2009b, 164).

The logic of multilevel governance, based on multi-directional, flexible, intersecting, variable, and networked relationships between diverse actors at different levels, characterizes the EU cultural policy. In the EU, the Directorate General for Education and Culture of the European Commission is the motor of cultural policy development but numerous stakeholders, such as international organizations dealing with culture and institutions based on research and information exchange, are involved in setting its agenda and act in various roles and tasks in its policy-making (Deway 2010, 120). Recently, the EU has started to explicitly emphasize participatory governance in its cultural policy discourses and implement it in practice. Similar to multilevel governance, the aim of participatory governance is to involve in policy-making processes diverse stakeholder networks, connecting different actors from the international to the local level.

The close tie between multilevel and participatory governance is reflected in the recent development of EU heritage policy. The aim of the first EU heritage policy was to “strengthen policy cooperation at different levels” (EC 2014, 3), “support new models of heritage governance” (EC 2014, 3), and “continue developing more participative interpretation and governance models that are better suited to contemporary Europe, through greater involvement of the private sector and civil society” (EC 2014, 7). In the same year, the Council of the European Union adopted its Conclusions on Participatory Governance of Cultural Heritage (CofEU 2014, 2) inviting member states to:

develop multilevel and multi-stakeholder governance frameworks which recognise cultural heritage as a shared resource by strengthening the links between the local, regional, national and European levels of governance of cultural heritage, with due respect to the principle of subsidiarity, so that benefits for people are envisaged at all levels.

Moreover, the Conclusions encouraged the member states to “promote the involvement of relevant stakeholders by ensuring that their participation is possible at all stages of the decision-making process” (CofEU 2014, 2). The EU Ministers for Culture agreed to set up an Open Method of Coordination to identify innovative approaches to multilevel governance of heritage involving the public sector, private stakeholders, and civil society, and to enhance cooperation between different levels of heritage governance (EC 2018a, 12). Work on this started in 2015 when the working group on participatory governance of cultural heritage was established. The group consisted of experts from 26 EU member states and Norway, and it met six times during 2015 and 2016. The group published a full handbook of recommendations for policy-makers and cultural heritage institutions. It saw, however, innovative participatory governance formats for cultural heritage as difficult to identify, believing that citizens’ broader participation in diverse processes of heritage was still in its infancy (EC 2018a, 13). On the basis of this work and the legacy of the European Year of Cultural Heritage, the Commission released the European Framework for Action on Cultural Heritage in 2018. This framework draws from participatory governance of heritage emphasizing participation in all its five pillars (EC 2018b).

Some EU policy officers whom we interviewed emphasized the need to promote the participatory governance model more in policy-making and management of heritage, particularly in relation to democracy, which is a core value of the Union. As one EU policy officer (E1) noted, heritage is always “a political choice” and a participatory approach is needed as “citizens must be involved” in making these choices. Another EU policy officer (E6) stated:

[C]ultural heritage […] is one of the main issues in European policy related to the quality of democracy, democracy deficit, and, also inequalities, because access to culture […] is one of the main fields of inequalities. So, cultural rights … it is very important that we can see all those developments, also at the international level. The problem with the European Union – we are very much aware of this – it is an issue of competences. So, it is very, very shy on working on cultural issues, both for ideological reasons, saying that we are not a nation state, so we should not have a top-down approach like it happened through the nineteenth century, or in the twentieth century.

As the quotation indicates, the officer perceives heritage in the context of democracy, democratic deficit, inequality, and cultural rights, but recognizes that the Commission is in a difficult position to intervene in this area without perpetrating the top-down model of governance familiar from nation states. Moreover, the Commission is not seen as having competences regarding cultural issues as they belong to the member states’ domain. The same officer (E6) noted that citizens’ participation in heritage processes is only possible through the involvement of local communities, as “it is illusory to imagine that there can be a sort ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Figures
• Authors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Europeanizing cultural heritage
• Part I Governing Europe
• Part II Geo-graphing Europe
• Part III Engaging Europe
• Part IV Embodying Europe
• Appendices
• Index