madam president i am very pleased indeed to have this opportunity to discuss this debate
it is only unfortunate that we are doing it on a thursday afternoon when it is not quite as well attended as perhaps it should be
i do think this is an important debate in the context of the current economic climate
we have already heard discussion about culture and jobs and how culture industries and people working in culture can contribute to the economy and can really help
at the precarious times we are facing now which we have heard already in this parliament it is important that we discuss these matters as fully as we can
i am here also because i do actually represent one of those big cities that the previous speaker mentioned
london as you all know is one of the cultural centres of the eu with as we all have enormous history and very much to offer
it is also the centre of certainly the british cultural industries
so i think i have a role here to speak for the people that i represent and to fight for those jobs which when things get bad are very often the first jobs to go
so i very much welcome what the commission has said about the role of cultural industries about how we want to preserve and to build on those and how there is an economic role for culture
i feel that very often that economic role is ignored and we do not talk about it we do not even think about it and we relegate culture to second-class status
that is not acceptable particularly when culture can be so very important in our national and regional development
i hope that one of the things to come out of this debate today that we take back to our member states and the commission and the council take back is that we are very concerned about how this regional development happens how we deal with this and the role that culture can play in that
also as mrs pack has already said there is the whole question of cultural diversity
i think one of the great strengths of the eu and of the european parliament is that we all come together now with twenty-seven member states and are actually very different in many ways different backgrounds and cultures and obviously different languages
that is just a start
although the world is getting smaller and although people come together more there are still these significant differences
we should be celebrating them because those differences are at the very core of the things that we talk about
we all want to preserve our identities and how we feel about ourselves and we need to do that
in this context i think we also need to take on board that we are getting people coming into our continent
we are getting people from other parts of the world many of whom are now in second and third generations in some of our member states who come from different backgrounds again
i think we also need to take on board that they come with their own culture tradition and languages
although we integrate them and they learn our languages they are still there with their own separate identities
that is an issue which has not been mentioned in this debate which i think is an important one and one that we i hope can integrate particularly when we talk about issues such as multilingualism which we have had good debates on
it is an extremely important issue and i think one we should perhaps give more prominence to than we have done but in the context of a europe which is changing
we therefore need to preserve our existing cultures and our existing diversity and actually absorb the new diversity which has come and which is continuing to come into our continent
for all of these reasons i welcome the support that we are giving to culture and to cultural industries support to small and medium-enterprises which i think in the current economic climate are possibly going to be the backbone of what we will be looking at
if large corporations and large enterprises are losing people making people redundant and laying people off it may well be up to the smaller outfits the smes to pick up this slack and to actually go out there and create employment for those who can work in this sector
so i hope we will all recognise just how important the role of culture is in our continent and our society and that those of us who have actually turned up for this debate will take the message back to our member states to the regions and to the people we represent
i know we have got a good message to say so let us go out there and spread the word
