The sustainable management of heritage, the Statute of the Artist and support for the video game sector are other of the main lines of action in Culture.
In the field of sports, equality, safety and the eradication of hateful behaviour in sporting environments will be addressed.
The lines of work follow the guiding principles of the European Union’s work plan for Culture 2023-2026.

Raise the status of culture

Raising the status of Culture, and recognizing it as an essential public good, a global public good is the first of the axes on which the work proposal of the Ministry of Culture and Sport is based during the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, which will be developed over the next six months.

The objective of the program is for the Member States to consolidate Culture and Sport as pillars and tools of European society to face a more sustainable future from an environmental, economic and social point of view.

As a first line of action, the Ministry aims to ensure that culture is recognized as an essential, universal asset and as a State policy among the members of the EU, consolidating it as a strategy and a driving force for the improvement of all citizens. The aim is to encourage and promote the implementation of public policies in line with the importance of culture, understood as an element of the construction and egalitarian and democratic cohesion of societies.

The Ministry will also promote the sustainable management of cultural heritage, its universal access and its role as the backbone of the territory. In this sense, cultural landscapes will be presented as spaces of memory that favour the feeling of rootedness in the different territories and reflect the physical basis of their intangible heritage. Spain has more than 100 cultural landscapes, including several declared World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.

Artist’s StatuteThe third line of work focuses on support for cultural professionals, whose role is fundamental to the global consideration of culture. The aim is to raise a political debate on the need to advance in the development of the Artist’s Statute, to improve the working conditions of the sector, propose the basis for specific European legislation covering all areas of their work, taking into account tax conditions, social security and the intermittency that often occurs in these sectors.

On the other hand, another priority seeks to support the work of the Commission and the Parliament on the video game sector and to promote a strategy that enhances its cultural and creative dimension.

The audiovisual and digital culture of the video game sector had a turnover of €23.3 billion in Europe during 2021 generated by nearly 4,900 companies and 200 distributors. In fact, more than 70% of the population between 6 and 24 years of age is a user of video games and in Spain, it is the first choice of audiovisual leisure. The sector will reach 11,000 direct jobs in our country next year, with the National Digital Content Pole of Malaga as a reference throughout Europe.

Video game industryThe challenges of the video game industry lies in the high fragmentation of the industrial fabric, in which independent studios encounter barriers to access the international market, and in the gender gap, given that only 30% of its professionals are women. Spain will also insist on greater coordination between European administrations to favour this sector, and on increasing interactions between its technicians.

In the area of sport, the Ministry considers sport as an engine of transformation and a generator of freedom.

Thus, in the first place, it is committed to promoting gender equality. The aim is to bring women’s participation quotas closer to men’s, in terms of employment in the sector, in federated and high-level sports, and in terms of representation in federations and boards of directors, since despite the great progress made in recent years, the sports scene continues to be male-dominated.

The aim is to promote equality in sports, make the female role visible, raise awareness of equality through sports, promote training and leadership of women in sporting environments and put an end to sexual and gender-based violence in sports at all levels.

Safe sports another issue to be addressed is the practice of sports in safe environments, establishing strategies to minimize the risks to athletes and fans during their participation in sporting events, competitions and training sessions.

Spain will propose to the member states the promotion of measures to guarantee health and safety in sporting venues – with special attention to children, people with disabilities, the LGTBIQ+ group and other groups at risk of social exclusion.

Finally, the work proposal of the Ministry of Culture and Sport during the European Presidency aims to establish guidelines to eradicate hateful and violent behaviour that unfortunately continues to occur, especially in the soccer environment. The Ministry emphasizes that the sports environment must be identified with integration, inclusion and collective effort.

Bearing in mind that Sport is an area that can help to prevent this type of action from occurring in other spheres, debate and reflection will be encouraged among the Member States regarding the actions and strategies to be adopted by each country and in the community context.