Luxembourg Minister of Culture Maggy Nagel yesterday opened the 'Culture and Development: Towards a More Strategic Approach to Cultural Policies in EU External Relations' conference at the Trifolion in Ecternach.

The conference was organised by the Ministry of Culture under the Luxembourg Presidency of the Council of the European Union and brought together around forty European and international stakeholders.

At the conference, Maggy Nagel explained that one priority of the current Presidency was to strengthen the role of culture in the external actions of the EU and a more in-depth view of cross-over culture. Minister Nagel condemned the destruction of heritage in Syria, expressing deep dismay at the Palmyra execution of Khaled al-As'ad, former Director General of Museums and Antiquities in the Syrian city.

Minister of Co-operation, Romain Schneider, was also present at the opening of the conference, and took the opportunity to stress the strong ties between culture and development, not only within the framework of the European Year of Development 2015, but also in the capacity of the combination of the two domains to ensure better policy coherence in Luxembourg co-operation.

At the conference, Minister Nagel also received the European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, Tibor Nacravsics; Chairwoman of the Committee on Culture and Education at the European Parliament, Silvia Costa; and Portuguese  Secretary of State for Culture, Jorge Barreto Xavier.

Minister of Culture of Cape Verde, Mário Lúcio Matias was also invited to the conference, to offer the views of the country constituting a partner of the European Union and an associated party of Luxembourg in terms of cooperation and culture. Minister Lúcio Matias advocated equal relationships and emphasised the equation Cooperation = giving + receiving + sharing.

 

Photo by Ministry of Culture