Periodic Report Romania

This report provides a summary of the measures initiated nationally to protect and promote the cultural diversity of Romania between 2007 and 2012. We must underline the fact that the information provided concerns, in particular, the activities carried out by the Ministry of Culture and its subordinate institutions.

We followed the role of cultural diversity in the development of coherent cultural policies that act unitarily to promote cultural values, support contemporary creativity, and protect and recognize cultural heritage, and regional measures and projects implemented and/or coordinated at the national level by the Ministry of Culture. These measures represent the incorporation of culture in sustainable development policies.

One example is the local development pilot project of the Regional Programme on Cultural and Natural Heritage in South East Europe (RPSEE), a Council of Europe initiative that is supported, directly or indirectly, by the European Commission, the Regional Cooperation Council, UNESCO, the Central European Initiative and the Forum of Heads of State and Government of South-East Europe, and has been implemented, in the case of Romania, in the Rupea-Cohalm region since 2007.

At the same time, in the spirit of the recommendations of the UNESCO Convention, the role of civil society has been marked by the conclusion of a series of partnerships with the public authorities at the central level along with other appropriate authorities, with the aim of stimulating the cultural and creative sector and fostering mobility.

By affirming the importance of the movable heritage, Romania has encouraged the mobility of the region’s museum collections, both within South-East Europe and in Central and Western Europe, with joint exhibition projects that promote, in the spirit of tolerance and mutual recognition of values, the cultural diversity of the region, such as, for example, the exhibition project entitled “Imagining the Balkans. History, Memory and Dialogue in South-East Europe”, initiated by UNESCO and for which the Romanian National History Museum hosted the fifth meeting of the working group in 2012.

As regards international cooperation, the Ministry of Culture has held activities with UNESCO as well as other organizations and structures, such as the Council of Ministers of Culture of South-Eastern Europe (CoMoCoSEE) and/or the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC).

Within the framework of UNESCO, we note the projects carried out on the occasion of the International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures, such as the international seminar “South-East European Experts Network on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage”, in Valcea, in partnership with the UNESCO Office in Venice.

The contribution of Romania, in terms of coordinating the activities of the BSEC Working Group on Culture during 2011-2012, aimed, among other things, to specifically promote national heritage in the Black Sea region, through the film industry. The Ministry of Culture thus organized the first documentary film festival, “Cultural Heritage Values Reflected in the Cinematography of the Black Sea Region”, whose success facilitates the running of a second such festival in 2013. We note that Romania has established an enabling legal framework by which we ensure the integration of the capacities of regional and local authorities in commitments, through culture, with regional, local and foreign authorities (Law on Local Public Administration No. 215/2001)

The Ministry of Culture has signed international agreements in the field of culture, such as the Agreement on film co-productions between the Government of Romania and the Government of the State of Israel, for example.

In terms of regional and/or international cooperation, the Ministry of Culture also has commitments such as: the Sibiu International Theatre Festival; the George Enescu Festival and International Competition; the Cluj International Film Festival; the Sibiu Jazz Festival; the Dakino International Film Festival; and the RadiRo International Festival of Radio Orchestras.