The European Parliament within the global governance of culture: voice and influence

Abstract: The paper deals with the international actorness of the European Parliament (EP) within the global governance of cultural industries, and in particular with its ability to promote the Convention on diversity of cultural expressions (CDCE) on its international relations and on the EU international agreements. In this respect, it attempts to analyse empirically not only the EP’s interests and strategies about the CDCE and its place within the EU external relations, but also the ways that the EP shapes the process of the global governance of cultural industries, challenging its political asymmetries and hierarchies. In this sense, the paper draws five main conclusions: a. it illustrates a recent multiplication of EP resolutions and of written parliamentary questions towards the culture in EU external relations, and especially the link between trade agreements and culture; b. the EP seeks to promote a more normative position for the global governance of cultural industries, taking cultural concerns seriously into account; c. the negotiations between EU and United States reveal that the EP does not follow the pro-liberalization agenda of the European Commission and especially of DG Trade. On the contrary, the EP sided with the French government and the cultural professional organizations and it interpreted the CDCE as a normative tool protecting and promoting the cultural policies in the context of the trade negotiations; d. the EP’s votes towards the culture in EU external relations follow more the national cleavages existing within the European Council rather than a left-right divide, showing that the national lines seem to be a substantial factor in order to understand the EP’s preferences; e. despite the establishment of an international normative framework towards the cultural sector and the inclusion of the culture as a component of the EU foreign policy, the EP’s diplomacy has not yet fully integrated the culture among its priorities. In this sense, the different aspects of the cultural sector such as the cultural and creative industries or the tangible, natural and intangible cultural heritage are absent from the discussions of the EP with national and other regional parliaments.