Presidency of the European Parliament
“We have lost a European leader, a defender of democracy, a man who defended European values with his deeds and not just his words.
And as far as I am concerned, we have lost a great friend of European culture”.
It is in these terms that Mariya Gabriel pays tribute to the President of the European Parliament David Sassoli, who died on January 11 when his mandate was about to end.
The new President of Parliament will be elected on January 18, and it is the Maltese Roberta Metsola, controversial for her stance against abortion, who seems to be the best placed to take over.
Mariya Gabriel salutes for her part “a woman who defends women's rights” and is delighted that, if she is elected “for only the third time in the history of the European Parliament, a woman will be at the head of this institution”.
The EU to the aid of culture and education
The Commissioner for Culture is “extremely satisfied with the priorities of the French presidency” in this area, because “culture is very high on the agenda”. She therefore wishes to reassure European artists and players in the sector that the European institutions will continue to help them so that they can recover from the extremely negative impact of the health crisis. She also wants to “highlight certain subjects that have not been addressed so often so far, such as the status of artists, and the need to see cultural projects in national recovery plans”, and “counts on the presidency French” to be vigilant.
The Commission is strengthening its support for creative and cultural partners through the 2022 Creative Europe work programme, around 385 million euros, i.e. almost 100 million more than in 2021. Mariya Gabriel is delighted with this allocation, but assures that “ it will not be enough” to relaunch the sector which, with the Omicron variant, saw the return of gauges to the entertainment world. It is therefore, according to her, “important that the sector has an eye on other possibilities”, for example with the Horizon Europe programme, “the strongest program in the world for investment in research and innovation. , which for the first time will have a culture and creativity center with a budget of 2.1 billion euros”. The Commissioner also calls on cultural actors to connect to the CultuEU platform,launched a month ago “where in one place we brought together all sources of funding for culture”.
The Commissioner for Education would also like to recall the importance of the Erasmus+ programme, “a real bridge between communities, between countries, which gives the possibility and the chance to live extremely enriching experiences” and one of its novelties that are the virtual mobilities.
However, she wishes to “reassure all participants that virtual mobility will never replace physical mobility, but it allows not to have blocking situations”.
Vaccination in Bulgaria
The issue of vaccination got the better of the previous Bulgarian government, which led the country to a long political crisis. The new Prime Minister, Kiril Petkov, therefore has the difficult task of bringing stability to Bulgaria. But despite the 35 euro reward it offers pensioners who choose to be vaccinated, Bulgaria remains the least vaccinated country in the European Union with less than 30% of the population having received two doses.
Mariya Gabriel regrets this situation, which she attributes to the “strong significance of this lack of trust due to misinformation and the lack of information presented by people in whom we trust”. She protests against the violence that has taken place in her country and maintains that for the situation to calm down, we need “dialogue, discussion, and an increasingly clear awareness of how much to vaccinate it is to be responsible towards oneself and towards society”.
She also regrets that Bulgaria still does not have its recovery plan, “while other countries have already made this investment so important for their economy, for their health system, for their teachers, for their sector. cultural".
She wants to see “a very clear line” emerge in order to be able to resolve her country's problems, because “without a stable government, without a good agreement on the country's priorities, it will be difficult to move forward as we have seen for a year".
To give your opinion on education policies in the European Union, go to the platform of the Conference on the Future of Europe.
Program prepared by Georgina Robertson, Isabelle Romero, Yi Song, Perrine Desplats and Céline Schmitt.
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