European Foundations Meeting: European Laboratory | Presse | bpb.de

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Ladies and gentlemen,

First of all I would like to express my wholehearted gratitude to our hosts for their kind invitation. I am very pleased to be able to make a short input in this stirring discussion round to a project that I estimate very highly and which my organisation will support in the future.

Let me briefly say some words on my institution the "Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung", which may not be known to everyone here, as well as the term "politische Bildung", as it is literally translated as "political education" this arouses in the European context more irritation than understanding. For this reason we have agreed in the realm of our international activities upon the formulation "civic education" or "active citizenship education", which pursues a broad approach to learning about democracy.

After the Second World War civic education in Germany was defined in terms of reeducation, education towards democracy. Following the German Reunification a relegitimation was necessary. The Federal Agency for Civic Education has succeeded in the process of newly justifying the discipline. Today our activities are involved with comprehending the task of seeing political science as a longterm investment in democracy and therefore in every individual citizen.

I want to outline here only three central points that reflect our understanding on the content and work of civic education and which, from my point of view, are transferable to the necessary requirement of an active European citizenship:

The promotion of formative competences in the individual: as a core element of civic education work, formative competence means the ability of creating links, looking over the edge of the plate, cooperating, networking and planning.

The strengthening of independent, critically enlightened thinking: the structural, transnational change in all areas requires a new way of thinking, global interaction and communication.

The intensification of participation competence: civic education wants to place every person in the position to be able to participate in shaping the future and in socio-political decision-making. Thus it promotes the emergence of an active civic society and strengthens its engagement towards overcoming the challenges in politics, economy and culture.

These models find expression in the many-sided range of services that we offer. These include printed products and a variety of event formats like conferences, congresses, festivals, fairs, exhibitions, travel studies, competitions, film seminars and cultural events as well as other events and retraining of journalists. Especially to be highlighted is the online offer of the Federal Agency for Civic Education, which is increasingly accessed to. Under bpb.de you can inform yourselves about us, our total offer, and, via background reports and dossiers, about current controversial topics and associations. Online orders are just as possible as the subscription of various online-newspapers, like e.g. the Links List on 11.9., the daily commented references on 11.9. and its consequences are processed – in the meantime an established teaching tool. Furthermore we have produced with fluter.de a new interactive online youth magazine put together by and for young people – an unconventional online tool that attractively presents political topics and invites young people to take part in it.

On the whole, this varied educational offers convey insights into historical and social associations of political, cultural, social and economic processes. As an institution of state-constituted civic education in Germany, we promote in addition events of more than 300 recognised educational establishments, foundations and government-independent organisations.

What are the grounds for our special interest in the European LAB?

1) In general: civic education, better-said an active citizenship education in and for Europe is inconceivable without conveying cultural values and cultural awareness. For the arts and culture form the creative space for processes of collective self-questioning and self-assuring. Cultural networks are the contemporary forms of organisation and communication, so that the arts and culture can become transnational and functionable without having to be dependent upon rigidly framed structures. And networks create a Europe of projects and therefore a future-capable "agora" where a European public comes together and can express and realise its civic and political participation.

The establishment of a European LAB with its central goals of transnational coordination and monitoring, information processing and procurement, but as well as those of production and distribution of information on culture, will decisively and lastingly contribute to the aim that networks can form synergies specifically among themselves but also with decision-making structures in respect of culture policy; that cultural actors are informed faster and more efficiently on culture policy measures and promotions and therefore can work in the longterm; a European LAB will ultimately be used for strengthening regional cultural trends and for documenting and utilising global trends and influences. Previous endeavours to form and to harness together a common identity on cultural policy on a European level can now be better channelled and targeted into the political and administrative decision-making levels. Therefore, given the establishment of a European LAB, a necessary common right to design cultural policy in Europe is being fulfilled, which is still only rudimentarily present.

The European LAB in the planned organisation form and structure in terms of content will therefore go beyond the previous approaches on a European culture policy. From my point of view, it will be on the European level in the medium- and longterm a powerful motor for cultural innovations, but as well for the intensification of European unity and identity; so ultimately a motor for the formation of a European community of values. And on this point the interests of a cultural awareness and education to promote active citizenship and participation meet each other.

2) Following up from this, the concrete interest of my organisation lies in the support of a project within the European LAB, and indeed the establishment of the planned media Portals. The deficit in democracy which is complained about in Europe and is evident also exists and perhaps even due to the lack of a mature general public. For us as a certainly primarily national-based organisation, but which is increasingly opened to international processes and endeavours to bring about multilateral cooperation, there exists a basic public responsibility and thus a substantial interest in the national preparation and transmission of the transnational discourse out of politics, society and philosophy, in the translation of leading European memorandums and contemporary and historical essays, in order to satisfy the growing practical demand in Germany. For European thinking, perhaps even better networked European thinking, has become in the meantime the top theme on the agenda of the citizens. In order to understand the processes of change, a national mediation floor is no longer sufficient. But also the mere look over the edge of the plate is unsatisfactory, for the processes of change have become more complex and multi-layered and cannot be explained any longer by merely processing information. It will depend on making the "diversity of ideas and thoughts" tangible and comprehensible for the citizen in the reality of his or her life. As a consequence we are hoping from the interactive media portals of the European LAB to lay the ground for new cultural products and intellectual stimulance going beyond pure information requirements, which convey no popular clichés and stereotypes but a new European discourse.