EU Ambassador Romana Vlahutin speech at the Council of Ministers of Culture of South-East Europe Conference "Enhancing Culture for Sustainable Development"

Dear Prime Minister, Ministers, Excellencies

Allow me first thank the Council of Ministers of Culture of South-Eastern Europe, and its Albanian Presidency, for organising this important conference.

Cultural heritage is not only essential to the identity of people, but best example to understand our common history as Europeans.

Resilient and dynamic societies are built on acknowledging the diversity of their heritage and the rich and long history of their mutual cultural exchanges. When you look at those interactions throughout centuries, it becomes only obvious that they form one European culture.

This has been a guiding principle of building the European Union, and I am very happy that European Council and European Parliament reached an agreement on establishing European Year of Cultural Heritage in 2018. There is no better way to remind us how proud we need to be and how diligently we need to protect our common treasures.

Altogether, in the last financial period, the EU invested around 4.5 billion EUR in preserving EU cultural and rural heritage! In the countries represented today, we support common priorities that are interlinked: intercultural dialogue, regional reconciliation, tourism and cultural heritage. We also strongly promote the participation in the EU programme Creative Europe and the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.

What is often under-valued however, is how much your heritage can drive sustainable tourism and local economic growth. It is one of the few areas where well planned investments can generate a high return.

Last Saturday I had the chance to be in Korca, at the corner of Albania, FYROM and Greece, where we as European Union are doing just that: exploring the touristic potential of the Albanian cultural heritage. There is a new National Museum of Medieval Art, which within a few months has brought new visitors to its collections, but also to the hotels, restaurants and other attractions of the town.

This museum in Korca exibits one of the richest collection of orthodox icons in the region, and is a breathtaking example of incredible richness of art and life in this region.

Despite this enormous potential, like Albania, many countries of the region face challenges which should be addressed to make historical centres capable of attracting tourism.

lack of financial resources for the cultural sector;

lack of public and political awareness on the role of cultural heritage;

shortage of skills for cultural heritage related sector policies.

Through IPA assistance, the EU is supporting projects to preserve, enhance and rehabilitate the built environment and urban cultural heritage.

This potential is a priority and, for future support, we are looking into a more strategic approach that connects tourism to culture, including institutional and human capacities, and raising of awareness on the role of culture for the country’s development.

As Ministers for Culture, I am sure you are also looking how to develop strategic initiatives focused on the entire value chain and destination management. It's not all about the seaside! Art and cultural heritage has a unique value for a touristic offer that is more sustainable and more diversified.

I hope the ministerial statement adopted today will further promote the importance of cultural heritage in each of your countries. One sentence in particular stroke a chord: "museums are not just heritage depositories".

And indeed they are not. The preservation of cultural heritage is a priority for social cohesion, dialogue, mutual respect and tolerance. Words which we would like to hear much more often these days.

I was born and raised in Dubrovnik, and its incredible beauty has shaped my perceptions and my identity. This is true for many other sites in this region, which throughout its history has been the best example of how our common European identity has prevailed over many challenges and hard times that came our way.

There is so much we can be proud of, and the best way to show it is to protect and promote the immense richness of our European cultural heritage.