© REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

The international system is undergoing rapid change. Power is shifting from Western states to rising powers; Russia and China are working to discredit civil and political rights; populists are eroding democracy by stealth; and America appears to be losing interest in upholding the liberal international order. The European Union, whose principal purpose is to protect human dignity by means of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, finds itself increasingly challenged in the realm of ideas.

Faced with threats to its cultural identity, Europe needs to mount a cultural response. EU member states have long practiced cultural diplomacy as a form of “soft power,” and EU ministers have stated that culture must also be an integral part of the EU’s international relations. Under EU law, cultural policy is primarily a national competence, but the EU may support it, including in foreign affairs.

For many years the European Commission has subsidized mostly short-term cultural development projects in various regions of the world. However, it has set neither geographical nor thematic priorities, and current spending patterns do not amount to an integrated strategy. In practice, the EU operates not one, but three foreign cultural approaches that reflect the geographical and budgetary logic of the relevant Commission Directorates General, with one responsible for culture, another for development, and a third for relations with the EU’s Eastern and Southern neighbors.

Links with the EU’s foreign policy priorities are tenuous. The European External Action Service, the EU’s diplomatic and foreign service, is short of cultural expertise and largely depends on the commission to fund external actions. Fragmented, under-resourced, and lacking a sense of direction, EU cultural diplomacy is in need of reform. Foreign cultural policy should be integrated with other policy domains, including human rights, development, and citizenship.

New Approaches Needed

There are a number of approaches the EU can take. Firstly, to push back against oppression, EU governments should step up support for the main international human rights regimes. It is hard to think of a reason why countries like India or Singapore could not be persuaded to join the UN Convention Against Torture, or why Malaysia must remain outside the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. And, occasional outbursts from Washington grandees notwithstanding, there is no reason why the EU should not continue urging its partners to end impunity for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide by joining the ICC.

European diplomats should also speak out more often and openly in support of freedom of expression. Too often, when artists are silenced, filmmakers arrested, or books banned, the EU stays silent. Thirdly, the EU should speak out more forcefully to defend academic freedom. When China cracks down on local academics or blocks access to European academic journals, and the EU looks away, China rightly regards this as a sign of weakness. Defending academic freedom is not only a task for governments. Universities, too, must face up to their responsibilities.

Countering Disinformation

Meanwhile, Russia systematically engages in disinformation to disrupt liberal democracies. The EU has adopted counter-measures that range from legislation to counter cyberattacks to a fledgling “strategic communications” unit. It also urges social media companies to act as gate-keepers of information. But this way of privatizing public responsibilities poses risks to freedom of expression; the EU would be on safer ground by adopting legally enforceable measures to secure the transparency and accountability of social media platforms.

China’s efforts to control information go beyond domestic censorship and surveillance. They include deterring and combating foreign critical voices. China’s measures range from exporting surveillance technology, disinformation, and intimidation to the pursuit of a new international media order.

As part of its response the EU should increase its political and financial support of independent, quality journalism, including within Europe itself, where such journalism has come under increasing pressure from governments, such as in Hungary and Serbia. The EU’s response could also include citizenship education that builds the capacity to think independently and distinguish truths from falsehoods.

An Integral Part

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals focus on the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. They do not include a separate goal on culture. Instead the SDGs indicate culture must be an integral part of policies to alleviate poverty, promote education, gender equality, and sustainable urbanization, and build peaceful societies that respect universal human rights.

As the world’s leading donor of official development assistance, the EU would be well-placed to promote this ambitious agenda. So far, the EU and EU member states have been slow to embrace the SDGs, as managing migration took priority. The incoming European Commission will have an opportunity to break the deadlock. Areas where the EU could make a difference include culture and education, culture and freedom of expression, and culture and conflict management.

Europe’s partners in the world expect Europe to change the traditional model of donor-recipient relations, and replace it with models of exchange and cooperation between equal partners. Too often Europe is felt to be extending aid, whereas what it should be offering is recognition and respect.

President Macron led the way by offering to return African heritage in French museums, much of it obtained in dubious ways under colonial rule, to the countries of origin. Other EU governments are still considering their approach. The issue would benefit from some European coordination, if only to avoid decisions being taken largely along national lines—in an unintended but no less awkward echo of previous colonial competition.

EU ministers could take the lead. Using the EU budget, they could agree to coordinate their national support for cultural institutes and museums in Africa and other parts of the world. A practical and highly symbolic way to cement their cooperation would be to launch a European program for investment in cultural infrastructure and cultural cooperation with the Global South.

Leading by Example

To stand for freedom and other rights outside its borders the EU must lead by example. Arguably, credibility begins at home, by standing up for the rule of law in the EU itself.

There is no democracy without liberty, and “illiberal democracy” poses an existential threat to European values and institutions. Popular discontent in Europe is fueled by a pervasive sense of economic injustice and political disenfranchisement, and by cultural changes. National responses must address each of these dimensions, visibly supported by the EU. Along with fair but restrictive immigration policies, this means countering unemployment and the excesses of free markets, citizen empowerment, and national and European financial support for citizenship, education, and culture.

Most Europeans regard culture as the factor that does most to create a feeling of community among them as EU citizens. There is much the EU could do to “bring the common cultural heritage to the fore,” as the EU Treaty explicitly allows.

Too often EU citizens feel treated as economic entities only, and not as citizens of a common political project based on humanist values. Cultural heritage, citizenship education, and language education could be among the building blocks of national and European policies to strengthen the saliency of European citizenship, along with steps to restore the humanities at the center of public education. The EU would have to secure sufficient financing in its new multi-annual financial framework for common programs like Erasmus, Creative Europe, Europe for Citizens, and the new European Values Instrument.

There is no quick road to soft power; cultural diplomacy is not a panacea. It requires both modesty and ambition from its politicians. Demand too much and the policy backfires; do too little and it fails to deliver. In and by itself culture cannot resolve either intra-national conflicts or international ones. But culture can facilitate independent thinking, dialogue, and understanding, provided it is employed freely and independently.

The EU is still a long way from realizing the potential of cultural diplomacy. The EU should upgrade its policies for international cultural relations and integrate them with its other policies to defend and promote the rights and liberties that are at the core of Europe’s identity, at home and abroad.

N.B. The article is based on the author’s paper Cultural Freedom in European Foreign Policy (Stuttgart: Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, 2019).

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© REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl

It was billed as an “art sensation” by Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. Instead, it turned into a messy illustration of the potential pitfalls of cultural diplomacy: It became clear just after Christmas that the much-anticipated exhibition of the collection of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art would fail to materialize.

The Tehran collection was assembled under the auspices of the last empress, Farah Pahlavi. It includes paintings by Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Mark Rothko, Paul Gauguin, Jackson Pollock, Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky, and Robert Motherwell that never been exhibited together in the West before. After Pahlavi and her husband the Shah fled Iran in 1979, museum staff hid the treasures in a basement vault to save them from the revolutionary mob. They lay undisturbed for decades, and have only been shown again in the museum since 1999.

Berlin was among many Western cities vying to be the first to exhibit the collection after the nuclear deal in 2015 and the ensuing lifting of sanctions. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier hailed the exhibition agreement as “a signal of a new cultural and social openness that we want to use to broaden our dialogue with Iranian society.” The plan was to show thirty masterpieces by Western painters alongside works by Iranian artists such as Parviz Tanavoli, Farideh Lashai, and Jalil Ziapour – first at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, then at the Maxxi museum in Rome.

The exhibition was originally scheduled to open on December 4, 2016, but it was postponed because of complications after Iranian Culture Minister Ali Jannati resigned in October. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation then set Iran a deadline for the end of December to issue the necessary export permits for the art. A last-ditch mission to Tehran in mid-December by Joachim Jäger, one of the curators, and Andreas Görgen, director-general for culture and communication at the German Foreign Ministry, failed to yield the necessary paperwork. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation regretfully cancelled its agreement with Iran on December 27, saying it couldn’t hold up its exhibition calendar any longer.

Disapproving of Art

The reasons why Tehran withheld approval appear to be varied and numerous. Some Iranian hardliners, disapproving of art in general, were opposed to the exhibition on principle. “This is not a presentation of Iranian culture,” said Bahman Nirumand, an expert on Iran at the Heinrich Böll Stiftung. “That is one reason why the conservatives might have a problem.” Others argued that the show risked taking on the appearance of a homage to the ousted imperial regime, despised by Iran’s current rulers.

Iranian newspapers also speculated that if the paintings traveled to Germany, they might never return. What if Pahlavi – who had expressed an interest in visiting the exhibition – tried to seize and claim them, despite the fact that she purchased the art with state money?

“It was of course clear from the beginning that this is a complicated project,” Parzinger said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper on December 6 – a comment that now looks like quite an understatement. In a November article for The Art Newspaper, Görgen conceded that “there are some who may question if the time is right to move forward with this type of co-operation.”

The preparations were fraught with difficulties. One of those who questioned the project was German Culture Minister Monika Grütters, according to the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT. An exhibition featuring a competition of cartoons about the Holocaust – many of which entailed Holocaust denial – had opened in Tehran in May 2016. The director of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Majid Mollanoroozi, was present at the prize-giving ceremony. In a letter quoted by DIE ZEIT, Grütters warned Parzinger in summer 2016 that the incident might reflect badly on the Berlin exhibition, and she distanced herself from the plans. Mollanoroozi was relieved of his responsibilities for coordinating the show.

Deeper questions were also raised. Should Germany be cooperating on major cultural projects with a regime that frequently imprisons its artists? A recent victim is filmmaker Keywan Karimi, whose production company said he began serving a year-long sentence in November on charges of “insulting sanctities.” Iranian artists also wondered aloud how the exhibition of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art’s collection would help them, and accused the German government of colluding secretively with the Iranian authorities.

A Setback

The exhibition’s collapse is a setback to German-Iranian relations. Before the revolution and for some years after, Germany was Iran’s biggest trading partner and German businesses are anxious to revitalize economic ties in the wake of the nuclear deal. Companies active in the country include BASF, BMW, and Siemens, which announced a deal to upgrade the country’s aging rail network in October.

The lifting of sanctions unleashed “some euphoria in Germany and lots of companies started to set about securing a foothold in Iran,” whose crumbling industrial infrastructure is of particular interest to German machinery makers, Nirumand said. Now, “that euphoria has subsided,” in part because companies are concerned they may be subject to fines from the United States, which still imposes some sanctions against Iran.

Relations between Berlin and Tehran have already come under strain in recent months. On a visit in October 2016, Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel was snubbed by the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Ali Larijani, after he warned that friendly ties between the two countries would only be possible once Iran accepted Israel’s right to exist. Larijani cancelled a scheduled meeting with Gabriel without giving a reason.

“Of Existential Significance”

In his article in The Art Newspaper, Görgen wrote that Germany’s rise to prominence on the world stage has led to “a push for a better delineated cultural strategy,” with more funds available and more global cooperation. “Art has to be protected as an open, free space where different views can be expressed… and through which dialogue can be held with all partners, even those who do not share our values and world view,” he wrote.

Those who do not share Germany’s values and world view may feel threatened by such a policy. Paul von Maltzahn, German ambassador in Tehran from 2003 to 2006, points out that cultural policy is “of existential significance” to the Iranian regime as it seeks to shield the country from foreign influences. It also presents a conundrum. “Without opening itself to the West, Iran cannot develop economically,” he said. “If it opens economically, then investors will arrive and bring Western culture with them.”

In the end Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, a self-described moderate elected in 2013, withheld the final signature required to let the art travel to Germany. With presidential elections looming in May, he may have decided that the battle over a Berlin exhibition was one he could concede to his more conservative rivals.

The German media was derisive about the art no-show. “What a fiasco!” said Deutschlandradio.  “A political disaster,” commented the Berlin public broadcaster RBB. But Germany is unlikely to give up attempts to nurture cultural links with Iran, despite the negative headlines and current sense of frustration. The potential long-term gains – both economic and political – are too great. As an archaeologist with extensive experience of working in Iran, Parzinger says the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, for one, “remains committed to cultural exchange, even with Iran, and will continue to promote this dialogue with suitable measures.”

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