During the first semester of 2018, the AEC lobbying activities have been mostly targeted at strengthening and expanding cooperation with other organisations active at the European level and national level, both those active in the field of art, culture and music, and those addressing higher education, science and research topics.

 

  • AEC has taken an active role in initiatives that echo the EU's policy paper "Towards a European Education Area by 2025", launched by Jean-Claude Juncker in November 2017. In this paper, the European Commission emphasizes more clearly than ever before the crucial role of culture and education for the future of Europe: "Education and culture are the key for the future – both for the individual as well as for our Union as a whole." As a result of this remarkably clear statement, a number of initiatives have emerged, in which the AEC has taken an active role. Among these were a demand to increase the percentage allocated to culture of the EU's total budget from 0.15% to 1%, a joint promising initiative to prevent the implementation of plans to dissolve the so far self-standing funding strand "Culture", as well as an agreement on concrete actions to strengthen the cooperation with the European University Association (EUA) and the European League of Institutes of the Arts (ELIA).
  • On 26 March, AEC CEO Stefan Gies participated in a workshop hosted by the Directorate-General for Education of the European Commission on how to organise and structure the future of cooperation between European universities.
  • On April 11, the CEOs of ELIA and AEC, Maria Hansen and Stefan Gies, met with EUA's Director of the Communications, Membership and Public Affairs department, Christel Vacelet, to agree on continued cooperation, especially in the areas of communication and advocacy. This brings the cooperation between the three partners to a next level.
  • AEC has established new contacts with the 'European Coalitions for Diversity of Cultural Expressions' and with 'Classical:NEXT’ in April. CEO Stefan Gies and his deputy Linda Messas had a face-to-face meeting with the Coalition's President, former MEP Carole Tongue. Stefan met also with the director of Classical:NEXT, Jennifer Dautermann. Both meetings will lead to specific actions strengthening cooperation between AEC and the new partners, in particular, the cooperation with Classical:NEXT (an initiative bringing together players and stakeholders dealing with classical music)  looks very promising (note also the separate news item on Classical:NEXT in this newsletter).
  • AEC President Eirik Birkeland participated in a structured dialogue with the European Commission on "Social Inclusion: partnering with other sectors" in mid-April as invited guest. 
  • After the personal visit to a number of AEC members from the UK earlier this year, in order to learn more about Brexit's impact on their day-to-day work and to investigate options how to assist them in their difficult situation, the AEC President and the CEO, launched an initiative to publish a shared statement by AEC and UK Conservatoires on the issue which was received with great gratitude by our British members.
  • AEC CEO Stefan Gies spent several days in Greece at the invitation of the Athens Conservatoire to support this new AEC member in tackling the recognition problems they are facing. The Athens Conservatoire can look back on a long standing tradition as renowned higher music education institution; their studies have so far failed to receive state recognition in Greece for no reason other than it is a non-state university run by a foundation.