Memo August 2017

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A memo sent to correspondents, friends and acquaintances of the Budapest Observatory (BO) in August 2017

What does autumn bring to Europe?

The ties that bind

When it is about European cohesion, culture matters most.

  

Never before were people so generous to culture, when interviewed by Eurobarometer. This spring, as they were asked to sort issues that are able to create a feeling of community among EU citizens, Europeans put culture clearly on top: 31% of respondents mentioned culture as one of the three most decisive issues.

The winning ticket would be culture – history – values, the three things that most people would identify as the ties that best bind the Union. Ten years ago it was economy – culture – history. In people’s minds the EU has shifted from a community of economic interests towards a value community.

The EU that scares

Here is a riddle, from the same standard Eurobarometer quiz taken in spring. Why is it that citizens in consolidated, affluent and large societies are worried much more about their cultural identity than people in poorer, small and periphery countries? Aren’t the cultures of these latter more at risk and vulnerable?

             

Browsing for heritage

The European Commission has come out with an update of a remarkable publication that scanned the entire jungle of EU legislation, institutions and operations in search for items that are relevant to cultural heritage. Well proven authorities in things EU will also discover lots of new connections to heritage.

Websites that serve

In June BO reviewed the English pages of a number of culture ministry websites. With the primary target clientele in mind, we have appraised the native language originals of four culture ministry portals. We went beyond the core offer of news, speeches and biographies of top administrators and looked for exemplary traits or major deficits.  

 

Serbia

In addition to standard content, here are some of the unique or remarkable features on the website of the Serbian cultural ministry offers:


Poorer than elsewhere:

Czechia

Besides the nicely illustrated news items, the Czech ministry’s website excels in a number of ways:


Poorer than elsewhere:

Denmark

Things to praise:

Hungary

In Hungary there is a joint portal for the entire government. In principle, the same structure and clean design facilitates orientation for the citizen. In reality, however, usage is rather cumbersome, few things are at one click. In any case, the culture pages are not really meant for everyday users. Items that are standard elsewhere are missing: strategy papers, statistics, budgets, link to institutions etc. All in all, BO found no feature that would put the Hungarian portal above its peers, sorry.

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