Gijs de Vries: Winning Friends and Influence
Whether it is Shakespeare or Chopin, Winehouse or Almodóvar, European culture has inspired people from all corners of the world regardless of language, religion, or state. Why then, asks Gijs de Vries, does culture still play such a minor role in the way the European Union presents itself to the world?
Download the full transcript here.
In a wide-ranging speech at the RSA on 22 October 2009, the former EU counter-terrorism co-ordinator called for cultural diplomacy to form a central element of the European Union’s external relations work.
'It is by familiarising others with one’s own language, films, books, music, architecture, and with one’s people and their thinking, that countries are often able to touch hearts and minds, and to win friends abroad.'
But does this hold true in the complex relationships between the European Union and emerging economies like China? According to de Vries, current obstacles rest primarily between respective bureaucracies, not between its citizens. It is thus, through people-to-people projects that ‘focus on collaboration and mutual benefit and that touch people’s lives … that hold most promise for Europe and China.’
The lecture concluded with a vision of what Europe’s international relations priorities should look like in the new world order -
‘It is a dream about universal values – cultural values inspired by Europe’s own achievements and failures. It is these values that should be the focus of European diplomacy’
More from the Talking Without Borders series can be found here.
