Harry Verwayen
General Director
Tel: +31 (0)6 10 88 40 60
[email protected]
Ms. Anneli Ott
Directorate, Minister Republic of Estonia
Ministry of Culture
Suur-Karja 23, 15076 Tallinn
Estonia
9 March 2021
Support and funding for Europeana Initiative under DEP
Dear Minister Ott,
I would like to urgently draw your attention to the future funding of the
Europeana Initiative under the Digital Europe Programme, with a view to securing
your formal support towards the European Commission DG CONNECT for
adequate resourcing for this critical project.
In 2008, Europe’s Member States made the bold argument that the digitisation of
Europe’s cultural heritage was too important to leave to market forces. From that
starting point, the European Commission established Europeana as its flagship
platform for digital cultural heritage.
Now, Europe is a world leader in digital cultural heritage and the Europeana
model has been copied across the globe. Through the Europeana ecosystem,
Europe’s cultural heritage institutions lead the way in knowledge sharing,
innovation and developing new standards supporting interoperability, open
access, and re-use. All of which supports the sustainability of the sector, as well as
contributing to others, including tourism, the creative industries, education and
research.
Today, the Europeana Initiative is the only digital cultural heritage project
earmarked under the Digital Europe Programme (DEP) and therefore critical to
drive this agenda. Indeed, the DEP Work Programme foresees Europeana at the
heart of the Data Space for Cultural Heritage and includes plans to expand the
functionality and remit of the current platform.
However, the proposed funding of Euros 7 million represents a real term cut of
more than 40% compared to current funding sources for the Europeana Platform
(under procurement) and Generic Services (under grants).
In such a scenario, the ability to deliver the Programme’s aims will be severely
constrained along with the ability of cultural heritage institutions across Member
States to participate in and benefit from related activities.
In order to support the ambitions of the Work Programme, the Europeana
initiative should be funded to a minimum of Euros 8 million p.a. for the platform,
with an additional Euros 4 million for grants-based projects on data provision and
capacity building (Euros 12 million in total). This represents a continuation of the
current funding adjusted for inflation and was in fact proposed in previous
versions of the DEP Work Programme.
To continue to lead globally in this field, Europe must now do more, not less,
especially with the potential of leveraging new technologies such as 3D and AI -
areas where Europeana is already active. We must build the capacity of our
cultural heritage institutions to use and maximise the potential of these new
technologies, ethically. And we must continue to do this in a way that supports
the scaling up of those efforts.
Now is the time for the European Union to be bold again.
On that basis and as a matter of urgency, I urge you as Minister to formally
support the ambition and funding needed for Europeana to succeed within the
future Digital Europe Programme.
Your Ministry was kind enough to voice support for Europeana to the Digital
Europe Programme Expert Group last week. I would be delighted to speak with
you at any time to discuss this further.
Yours sincerely,
Harry Verwayen
General Director
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