(Finance) – “The Italian government is working on an ‘Olivetti Plan for Culture’ which provides for an extraordinary investment of 30 million euros for the benefit of libraries, in particular in the peripheral and less developed areas of Italy”. This is what the Minister of Culture, Alessandro Giuli, speaking in Brussels at EU Council of Culture Ministers.
“Libraries – he continued Giuli – are the nation’s most widespread cultural infrastructure. And they represent an extraordinary social capital for their capacity for inclusion and civic education for the benefit of all, especially young people and the less well-off. In an age where much of our social, political and economic life takes place online, libraries also promote digital citizenship. Also for this reason the government, thanks to the National Recovery and Resilience Plan financed by the ‘Next Generation EU’, is creating the Italian Digital Library, which collects digital cultural resources including the cultural heritage of libraries on an integrated platform, to allow citizens to access integrated databases. The Ministry of Culture then promotes media literacy in libraries, encouraging digital inclusion, allowing those who do not have the means to access information. And, in this context, libraries play an active role in teaching how to interpret such information, helping to distinguish between sponsored content, misinformation and reliable news to form informed and informed opinions. Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie has now given way to Wikipedia. Young people risk forming their civil conscience on sources of poor scientific quality, which do not express the depth of European cultures, are standardized to the drifts of ‘political correctness’ or, even worse, are driven by the propaganda of authoritarian regimes. We must work so that libraries renew every day, in the face of technological evolutions, their civic function of safeguarding the political and cultural values of Europe”.
Giuli subsequently reported to the other European Union ministers i results of the G7 Culture under the Italian presidency held in Naples, focusing in particular on support for Ukraine, on the protection of human creativity from the challenges posed by artificial intelligence and on dialogue with African governments for the promotion of their cultural heritage in the framework of the Mattei Plan. Full appreciation for the results of the G7 Culture initiative was expressed by the European Commission.
“I thank Slovenia for its commitment to promoting Nova Gorica and Gorizia as European Capital of Culture 2025. The Italian government also attributes great political and cultural value to this project”, he added Giuli.
On the sidelines of the Council, Giuli her French counterpart had a bilateral meeting Rachida Dati with which it agreed to work together, in the new European legislature, to strengthen the EU’s commitment to supporting culture. The two ministers foreshadowed the possibility of discussing shared financing instruments in European fora for investments in culture related to the growth of military spending.