The crisis will only be resolved, the global cultural sector will only recover, and international relations will only be restored if peoples of the world are enabled to meet and collaborate freely with one another.

The Covid-19 pandemic has a crushing effect on the work of international cultural relations. Artists and organisations, including EUNIC members, are severely affected by the abrupt discontinuation of their activities, which rely so heavily on people coming together to collaborate across borders.

At the Online Members Assembly on 4 June, EUNIC members pledged to continue to strengthen European cultural relations. They published a statement to call to mind the importance of cultural relations and their value for friendly and peaceful foreign policy, and to emerge from this crisis as unscathed as possible.

EUNIC members call on all actors to put cultural relations at the core of our efforts to combat the rippling effects of the coronavirus outbreak, to protect culture from budget cuts in the post-crisis financial frameworks and EU budgets for culture to be substantially increased.

Read the full statement “For the future: Make cultural relations count in a post-crisis global society”.

The Statement is also available in the following languages: French, Italian, Spanish.