Problems of a European Policy in the Cultural Field

Abstract

Anyone setting out to discuss the problems of a European Policy in the cultural field some ten years ago would have found himself in a position very different from that of the author of the present article. In 1946, the very notion of a ‘European Policy’ had a reactionary, if not a utopian, tinge. The prevailing political mood immediately after the war was averse to any kind of regionalism. Immediate creation of the ‘One World’ was the shining goal of international politics. Regional institutions, if accepted at all, were then thought of as subsidiary agencies to the world-wide United Nations Organization (provided for, however, in Chapter VIII of the United Nations Charter). Within a very short time, world public opinion moved to the opposite extreme: the ‘cold war’ seemed to set the stigma of utopia on the concept of the ‘cold warOne World’. Somewhere between these two extremes, the political world of 1956 seeks an intermediate position. The universal security system of the United Nations has reluctantly resigned itself to the existence of rival power blocs or ‘regional systems of collective self-defence’, as they are sometimes called with an allusion to Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. A new group of powers is taking shape in Asia and Africa, proclaiming itself bound neither to the Western nor to the Eastern bloc. ‘Competitive coexistence’ is about to replace the ‘Cold War’ as the catchword of the day. Political and economic regionalism seems to have come to stay as a permanent feature of world politics.