Serbia signed Creative Europe agreement

Serbia signed Creative Europe agreement

The Minister of Culture and Information, Mr Ivan Tasovac, today in Brussels signed the Agreement on the Accession of Serbia to the Creative Europe Programme for assistance in the creative and cultural sectors. The total budget of the programme of EUR 1.46 billion is allocated to the period 2014-2020.

“Today is a great day for Serbian culture and art, because not only symbolically but also officially Serbia is becoming part of Creative Europe,” said Minister Tasovac at the signing of the Agreement and then added: “This is very good news for all our cultural institutions, for all our artists, and the complete civil sector, because through exchanging ideas and experience we will becoming more and more a part of this creative Europe that we have belonged to for a long time.”

“I am very happy that the signing of this agreement will allow Serbia to realize the benefits of this programme,” said the European Commissioner for Culture, Education and Youth, Androulla Vassiliou, who signed the Agreement on behalf of the European Commission.

With its vibrant culture and specific Roman and early Byzantine architectural heritage, which is in part on the UNESCO’s list, its numerous museums, theatres, music festivals and literary tradition, Serbia enriches our common European space, Vassiliou added.

Serbia is the first country outside the European Union to sign the Agreement on participation in the new Creative Europe programme.

The Commission plans the signing of similar agreements with Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Turkey, Georgia, and Moldavia, and there are preliminary talks with several other countries.

The Minister stated that the Ministry of Culture and Information had already in February formed the Creative Europe Desk that would organise already at the end of June the first conference at which the leading experts from Europe (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Croatia, the Netherlands, Germany, Romania, Slovenia, and Sweden) would exchange their experiences with cultural representatives from Serbia about how to apply for funding within the Creative Europe programme.

Serbia is also expected to join the MEDIA sub-programme of Creative Europe after the alignment of legislation in the audiovisual field with the legislation of the European Union.