Concerned with the policy and administration developments in regard to cultural heritage across Central and Eastern Europe, the research question of the dissertation is to determine whether the decentralisation and the inclusion of private stakeholders such as companies and civil society in that sector would provide more sufficient sustainability in economic and protection terms. Suggesting controversial results of these reforms, there is a methodology established that seeks thorough evaluation of law, tradition and practice. After initially revising the origin of these policy and administration changes through the UNESCO, the Council of Europe and especially the European Union, the research concentrates on a sample of nation states. Using both qualitative and quantitative data, each national case is regarded on its own, with assessment by the means of comparison at the end. On the basis of the outcomes, it could be concluded that there are not less financial and conservation repercussions exclusively due to the dissolution of the previously centralised heritage preservation systems.
Table of Contents
List of abbreviations
List of tables
List of figures
Introduction
Part I. Theoretical basis of the research
Chapter 1. Cultural heritage and Europe
Chapter 2. Problem
Chapter 3. Research approaches and methodology
Chapter 4. Structure
Chapter 5. Key assumptions, limitations and outcomes
Chapter 6. Elements of heritage governance and management systems
6.1. Museums and monuments, tourism
6.2. Cultural heritage digitalization
6.3. Real estate, local governance and citizens
Chapter 7. International and supranational impact
7.1 UNESCO
7.2. Council of Europe
7.3. EU Institutions
Part II. Central and Eastern Europe. Case studies
Chapter 1. Central and Eastern European nation states
1.1. Authoritarian and Communist legacies and their effect
1.2. Transformation from Communism to free market economies
1.3. Comparative analysis of nation states
1.4. Indicators for analysis
1.5. Data used fot the comparative analysis
Chapter 2. Poland
2.1. Historical Developments
2.2. System of authorities
2.3. Preventive archaeology
2.4. Private sector involvement
2.5. Volunteers
2.6. Impact of the EU Structural funds
2.7. Conclusions on Poland
Chapter 3. Hungary
3.1. Historical perspective
3.2. Organisational structure
3.3. Museums
3.4. Private sector, non-governmental public and private sector
3.5. Right to excavate
3.6. Impact of the Structural Funds of the European Union
3.7. Conclusions on Hungary
Chapter 4. Romania
4.1. Historical perspective
4.2. System of authorities
4.3. Right to excavate
4.4. Stakeholder access and cultural tourism
4.5. Impact of the EU Structural Funds
4.6. Conclusions on Romania
Chapter 5. Bulgaria
5.1. Historical perspective
5.2. Organisational structure
5.3. Museums
5.4. Preventive excavations
5.5. Right to excavate
5.6. Inventories, illicit trading and digitalization
5.7. Private and non-governmental sectors
5.8. The impact of the EU Structural Funds
5.9. Conclusions on Bulgaria
Part III. National level assessment and comparative analysis of policy impact
Chapter 1. Historical assessment
Chapter 2. Cultural employment
Chapter 3. Funding of culture and cultural heritage
Chapter 4. Cultural and heritage tourism
Chapter 5. Museums activity and visits
Chapter 6. EGMUS
Chapter 7. Digitalisation and cultural heritage protection
Chapter 8. Impact of the EU
Chapter 9. Some notions on the Council of Europe
Conclusion
References
Appendix 1. Institutional “soft” power of Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria
Abstract
Concerned with the policy and administration developments in regard to cultural heritage across Central and Eastern Europe, the research question of the dissertation is to determine whether the decentralisation and the inclusion of private stakeholders such as companies and civil society in that sector would provide more sufficient sustainability in economic and protection terms. Suggesting controversial results of these reforms, there is a methodology established that seeks thorough evaluation of law, tradition and practice. After initially revising the origin of these policy and administration changes through the UNESCO, the Council of Europe and especially the European Union, the research concentrats on a sample of nation states. Using both qualitative and quantitative data, each national case is regarded on its own, with assessment by the means of comparison at the end. On the basis of the outcomes, it could be concluded that there are not less financial and conservation repercussions exclusively due to the dissolution of the previously centralised heritage preservation systems.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my supervisor, Prof. Dr. Vladimir Chukov, for his guidance through each stage of the process as well as Assoc. Prof. Mimi Kornazheva for a lot of detailed advice. I should thank my professors Katarzyna Stoklosa and Gerd Groezinger who guided my similar Master Thesis. I need to acknowledge the help of my former colleague, Miroslav Manev, for so many remarks that he has given me and Kostadin Kostadinov for lots of inspiration. To that I would also add Veselin Loulanski.
Preface
My interest in the topic of cultural heritage governance and superintendence was sparkled by me seeing so many historical houses in my hometown of Varna being neglected or destroyed on purpose, and the city losing its unique atmosphere.
List of abbreviations
EGMUS: European Group on Museum Statistics
EU: European Union
GDP: Gross Domestic Product
ICT: Information and communication technologies
SME: Small and medium enterprises
TFEU: Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union
UIS: The UNESCO Institute for Statistics
UK: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
UNESCO: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
USSR: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
List of tables
Table 1. Percentage of persons working in the cultural sector
Table 2. Number of persons working with intangible cultural heritage
Table 3. Public expenditure in the sampled countires
Table 4. Public expenditure in the sampled countires for museums and archives as part of the general public expenditure on culture
Table 5. Number of nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments intra-EU, in thousands
Table 6. Number of nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments, Germany, in thousands
Table 7. Number of nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments, France
Table 8. Number of nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments, Italy
Table 9. Number of museums breakdown per ownership type in Poland
Table 10. Museum admissions, Poland
Table 11. Public expenditure for museums in Poland in EUR
Table 12. Museum staff in Poland
Table 13. Number of museums, Poland
Table 14. Temporary exhibitions, Poland
Table 15. Number of museums breakdown per ownership type in Hungary
Table 16. Total income and breakdown for Hungarian museums in EUR
Table 17. Total admissions and breakdown for Hungarian museums
Table 18. Total staff and breakdown for Hungarian museums
Table 19. Socialization and digitalization data for Hungarian museums
Table 20. Number of museums and visitors per year in Romania
Table 21. Staff and curatorial activity data for Romanian museums
Table 22. Number of museum visits in Bulgaria
Table 23. Income of museums in Bulgaria in EUR
Table 24. Curatorial activity in Bulgarian museums
Table 25. Number of museums with museum education programmes, Bulgaria
List of figures
Figure 1. Elements of heritage governance and management systems
Figure 2. System of EU influence over the national heritage governance
Figure 3. Organigramme of the Polish system of cultural heritage governance
Figure 4. Organigramme of the Hungarian system of heritage management
Figure 5. Organigramme of the Romanian cultural heritage governance system
Figure 6. Bulgarian cultural heritage governance organigramme
Introduction
Cultural heritage could be described as the sum of all anthropological activity that is significant to a given culture in historical context. That could encompass archaeological finds such as artefacts and ancient ruins, architectural landmarks and monuments, cultural landscapes and even folklore and traditions. The notion and the importance of cultural heritage in the beginning of the 21st century, long after the emergence and rise of nationalism, of social sciences and history, globalization and post-modernism, plays continuously growing role in public and private lives. In his book „The Heritage Crusade and The Spoils of History” David Lowenthal even describes heritage as „newly popular faith”, „cult”, „craze” that shifted the focus of the human society from „progress” to „nostalgia”. Economically put, the demand and supply in heritage is increasing and so it spreads to lots of sectors - public and private, from construction to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).
Heritage in economic terms represents both the comprehension of already created culture and an element of the so-called culture industry. That way it posses two characteristics of culture industry – it is based predominantely on symbolic, rather than utilitarian functions, and so it relies on disposable income . Cultural heritage is still not well defined as public or a private good, as long as being part of culture. However, it remains overwhelmingly more protected by the nation states than other elements and bracnhes of culture. Schofield even argues that state-imposed over-protection is the most important question of heritage management currently as archaeological finds that used to be uncovered independently by enthusiasts with metal detectors are now being legally set as very important. That process could be mildlier summarized as threath of growth management .
The overprotection and overregulation in this sector have had a steady development. The basic historical steps that policies affecting culture and thus heritage have overtaken could be listed as presented by Jeffcutt and Pratt. They mirror four basic paradigms of understanding culture. The first period of development, they argue, was the Romantic one. It was characterized by idealism and thus it was supporting high-culture and elitism. The next step was affected by industrialization of the post-Second-World-War period and the evolution of mass culture that was directed to the vast majority of possible consumers which could assess a more restricted set of values. Late capitalism or the period after the fall of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe that imposed total capitalist hegemony, gave prominence of the economic side of culture and decision-making was affected by its commodification, its turning into goods and services. The last period of the early 2000s is, according to Jeffcutt and Pratt, the period of socio-political understanding. The paradigm is viewing culture as an instrument of creating communal ties and battling social exclusion at the first place .
According to Hasmondhalgh and Pratt, the initially adopted cultural policies have devoloped in self-contradiction. They sought greater access and democratization of culture, but also through art subsidies and public broadcasting they remained exclusive and the state as an entity was keeping control over culture. Economization and commodification of culture was sparkled by the free-market revolution of the 1980s and the concurring information industry developments. Culture, Hasmondhalgh and Pratt argue, was starting to be understood as an industry that could be materially benefitial for nations and communities. That notion was welcomed by the whole political spectrum as fiscally responsible by conservatives and democratizing by progressives .
Applied to the narrower aspect of cultural heritage, these policy backgrounds have had three stages, as described by Ashworth. The first one, coinciding with the Romantic period of Jeffcut and Pratt, was based on preservation agenda and occured in the mid-19th century and was limited to few stark representations of a given cultural history. The next, corresponding to mass culture, starting form the 1960s, was deploying conservation as a main tool and further shifted the focus from selected superstar places, monuments and objects to the whole territory of a nation state. At last, the free market of the 1980s created the notion of overarching heritage that has sought to cover further more objects, as well as their communication and interpretations. The developments of the next milenium or the inclusion of socio-economic aspects have been dominating heritage policy and academic paradigms, as further argued.
Part I. Theoretical basis of the research
Chapter 1. Cultural heritage and Europe
Even though the heritage „movement” is affecting seriously most of the world, the continent that is a main ignitor and a stark example of that process is Europe. That continent is characterized by a great cultural diversity and with cultural dominance over the rest of the globe, known as „Eurocentrism”. The interest and spending on cultural artefacts, monuments, museums and other elements of heritage in Europe, however, puts the question of admnistration, budget and transparency, as well in equality in receiving and redistribution of the positive outcomes. The ideas for policy developments in dealing with heritage in academia, the UNESCO, the Council of Europe are proposing a more bottom-up approach than the previously and still currently established predominantly centralized systems. Through education, research and development, regional actions and others, the European Union is following some of these new paradigms using recommendations and substantial funding to the Member States. A considerable problem thus would be if the Member States and the respective local actors intended to step in, would be up to the challenge to deal with heritage in this new framework if there is not a present internally ignited and needed shift towards such actions and policies.
That question would be of crucial importance with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe as these states have experienced authoritarian and Communist regimes that held the heritage administration on strictly ideological and furthermore, centralized base. The problems of management decentralization and popular access, economic output and sustainability through the mass involvement of local authorities, non-governmental organizations and other stakeholders are posing some risks. Besides the most obvious problem economy versus social and cultural benefits, there are some more endangering factors.
The problems of Communist past pose risks such as cultural heritage preservation, setting the status of particular monuments, control over interpretation and its communication to the public. Authoritarianism and the nationalistic Socialism (the form of Communism that prevailed after 1970s in Eastern Europe) may provide a ground for re-igniting minority conflicts through contended heritage and history, as it has happened before the Balkan wars for example, especially if the local academia and heritage specialists are entrenched in such developed traditions. Furthermore, there are relatively newly adopted local governance sytems and the higher levels of corruption pose risk to the cultural management systems and heritage preservation.
Chapter 2. Problem
In that respect, the topic of the dissertation would be the policy developments and heritage management systems in the Central and Eastern Europe nation states which are addtionally Member States of the European Union. More specifically - the efficiency in terms of economic and social sustainability of the aforementioned reforms in comparison to the previously established systems. It would further include the linkage of these policy areas with the supranational law of the European Union, the international law promuglated mainly via the Council of Europe and the United Nations and their „soft” forms as in the practices of recommedndations, opinions, etc. A major stess would be put on comparing Member States systems, absorption and administrative capacities, and so posed risks affecting cultural protection and exploitation. The combination of these considerations leads to the following research question: Are the reforms towards decentralisation and inclusion of private stake holders providing sufficient economic support and protection of cultural heritage than the previously established centralised administration?
The question challenges the idea as there is systematic and well-planned change in cultural heritage policy. That opposite notion is set, as in the case of Council of Europe Conventions on cultural heritage, by Daniel Therond:
“the adoption and the application of the conventions is dictated […] by the extent to which professionals and the community at large become familiar with them and recognize them as useful tools”.
Instead, when the instrumentarium of such recognition is underdeveloped as already argued – by possibly ideologically entrenched academia and civic culture still restrained by the Communist past, the dissertation argues that the change of cultural heritage policy and superintendence is up to the single nation state. The governments may, however, step up only due to, either significant organizational and management difficulties protecting and stimulating the construction branch, or trying to set, revive or boost cultural tourism. Thus society and individuals may receive primaraly increased monetary value rather than protection, values or empowerment with that being promuglated through the state.
The relevance of the research in the already existing academic efforts would be in dealing with cultural heritage policies and superintendence in Central and Eastern and South Eastern Member States of the European Union as existing academic works on that particular region are rare and the focus is mainly put either on Western Europe, the United States of America, Australia or on the developing countries of Africa or Asia. Even futher, the connection of the cultural heritage with its socio-economic setting is still not studied well in Central and Eastern Europe, an inaction called upon by the European institutions, “not always supported by clear evidence or in-depth analysis”, “based on anecdotal evidence and tend to include dogmatic statements about the importance of heritage”.Hesmondhalgh and Pratt suggest the need of further investigation of cultural policies „outside the geographical contexts where they first came into being”. That way the challanges of heritage management based on institutional settings rather than cultural, ideological or academic reasons could be explored and would be particularly relevant and valid for the region of Central and Eastern Europe.
The dissertation would further argue that this set of nation states and their heritage administration systems are increasingly important due to two major reasons. Firstly, they present a very unique and stark example of changing paradigm from state control and centralism of decision-making to decentralization and inclusion of various non-governmental stakeholders, based on the Hesmondhalgh and Pratt principle of testing outside the initial place of origin. So, in academic terms, they may be very useful to assess these particular problems. Secondly, they hold significant influence on decision-making, including the creation of „soft law” in various organizations in the following line – the European Union, the Council of Europe, UNESCO and further expert global bodies on either political or technocratic level. In that way their practical experience in these reforms would form the future policy developments set by the international and supranational bodies.
Chapter 3. Research approaches and methodology
The following work on cultural heritage policies and administration presupposes the need of an interdisciplinary approach that includes aspects of law, political economy, political science, history and others. In that sense, considerations for inter-compatibility of theoretical approaches should be taken into account in order to keep the credibility and viability of the upcoming construction. However, the main focus would be on policy implementation and outcomes in the area of cultural heritage, rather than cultural, personal gains and politics, although the latter would be taken into account.
The policy evaluation of the theoretical part considers various schools of thought dealing with heritage superintendence - such as public choice theory, new institutionalism, contract theory and property rights approach. The academic notions that seek to enhance both economic and social value such as those proposed by the various works of Throsby , however begin to dominate the field and have the greatest importance in regard to policy developments as later revealed. Although not completely consistent, as put by Holler and Mazza, that undeveloped academic framework on political economic foundations and econometric evaluation of heritage, provide it with some merits on its own. As such, the focus could be set on governance rather than the fundamental questions of state involvement, an approach that could be amplified by the observation that still in most of the countries, the „major historical resources” and the instruments of interpretation are state-owned and state-run. To bypass these limitations, Holler and Mazza regard a number of problems – multi-tiered government systems, agencies, other institutional bodies, their objectives and thus resulted otcomes as means to „predict and evaluate” policy development . Given the rationale of that approach and acknowledging its practicality, it would be adopted to cope with the tasks of the following analysis.
The dissertation would focus mainly on accessibility and destruction of state monopoly on heritage, which is based on the understanding of socio-economic sustainability. Such an approach would be close to the framework proposed by Luca Zan. It is based on the speculation that there is not a quality communication between heritage and management specialists and thus there are present flaws in heritage administration. Thus it seeks inquiry through „comparing case studies” of „practices rather than policies” on the basis of „sustainability in terms of financial resources, human resources, knowledge management and the relationship with the audience and communities of scholars”. However, it should be noted that the approach is being applied mainly to microlevel case studies such as museums and monuments, rather than macrolevel or state systems. Lacking the illustrative strenghts of the field research, the following work would search the limitations proposed by Zan, as well as those of Holler and Mazza previously taken into account, that the state of heritage management could be resulted not solely from policy and system of decision-making, but also from „set of […] rules, attitudes and practice (and laws)” prevailing in a given nation-state .
Based on these theoretical notions, the major part of the analysis would be based on comparative approach. Revising similar cases after the mark of an event – the end of totalitarianism and the beginning of globalization and Europeanization of a sample of Central and Eastern European states, could highlight the internal dynamics between variables in the given systems. That way stronger and broader conclusions on the problem could be drawn. The comparative approach, taking into account the evaluations of the scholary works on the issue of cultural heritage policy and superintendence, would employ mixed, or both qualitative and quantitative arguements and data. Such mixed measurments are also backed by the summarization made by Murzyn-Kupisz on the estimations of the impact of both socio-economic and sustainable development paradigms . Documentary analysis would be used to evaluate the documents produced, used and followed by various international, supranational, national, regional and local as well as from the numerous non-governamental organizations, cultural heritage operators such as museums, research institutes, associations and others.
These constrains would provide the current dissertation with working hypothesis, or the accent would be placed on the application of methodology and seeking the answers of broader questions. The hypothesis adopted is that in the Central and Eastern European Member States of the European Union, the reforms in the field of cultural heritage are failing to provide sustainability as devolution and inclusion of private sector do not fit well with overall economic and protection outcomes.
Chapter 4. Structure
The basic framework of the dissertation structure would be the following: initially, an introduction and theoretical part that would argue for a viable prism for problem inquiry in the field of socio-economic sustainable heritage policy and management, already being presented in Part I. The analytical section that would follow the theoretical one would be divided in three chapters. At first, would consider the theoretical idealistic system of cultural heritage governance and management and its basic elements, revising their economic implications in addition to their cultural settings. would introduce the standard-setting policies of the UNESCO, the Council of Europe and the European Union and the way they influence the actions of nation states, national academia, civil society and heritage experts. Part II would summarize and argue on the basic decentralisation developments of the selected Central and Eastern European states and their heritage policy and administrative systems. Additionally, these would include the respective considerations of international and supranational impact. The last part or Part III would present and summarize some of the key findings and outcomes. An appendix would be fitted outside the main part of the dissertation with listed EU-level lobby and non-governmental organizations and a brief analysis of the institutional influence the sample countries wield through their representatives over those organisations would be conducted.
Chapter 5. Key assumptions, limitations and outcomes
The key assumptions that would be made and used in the following work are the intrisic cultural value of cultural heritage and the self-explanatory need of its protection and preservation. Although some analysis on the cultural benefits of heritage would be made, they would not challenge the aforementioned assumptions of intrisic value. In the field of protection, the understanding would be that that intrisic value is the basis upon which economic and social elements of the heritage system could develop.
The dissertation would be limited to a number of cultural heritage elements, namely archaeology – planned and emergency excavations, archaeological finds and artefacts, their exhibition, presentation and collection in museums; architectural or built heritage and notions on the relatively newly introduced concept of landscape heritage. That narrow scope would exclude to some extent the majority of elements such as interpretations in the forms of history textbooks, academic and civil interpretation of cultural heritage items and topics, folklore and traditions as well as broader intangible heritage. Such division would be in line with the notion of Ashworth and Larkham, that built heritage and monuments have been the most important in „public history” and thus more valid and more illustrative conclusion are expected to be made adopting such limitations. Another key limitation would be of the scope of the analysis, which would not cover all of the Central and Eastern European Member States of the European Union, but a selected few, which would be further presented in the following chapters.
The outcomes sought by the dissertation would be in different sets of categories. Firstly, theoretical considerations of prior research, mainly based on the problem of empowered local and private factors and greater communication versus state intrusion given the wider picture across the European Union, including presumptions on the test of the working hypothesis, namely that the current paradigm adopted by international and supranational agencies and bodies does not provide better protection of cultural heritage. Secondly, there would be a summary of the main problems of heritage policy and its transformation in the set of countries of Central and Eastern Europe analysed by the dissertation.
The analysis of the forementioned cases should and could possibly answer problems as:
- Whether there is a need for a home-grown national evolution of the cultural heritage governance and superintendence systems before the implementation of new policies inspired by international and supranational bodies, given the risks in the particular region already presented. That question is based on the notion that “changes that have taken place in the culture and heritage sector, in many countries of the Central Europe, since 1989 have not come as a result of the internal evolution of the sector but above all as a function of external reforms, including changes as fundamental as the democratisation of the state, local government reform, decentralisation, privatisation, changes of the taxation system and European integration” (Giraud-Labalte & al., 2015, p. 113).
- Whether the comparison of the case studies could provide a benchmark of best practices that could make the cultural heritage governance and administrative transition more stable and sustainable.
- The process of the divergencies between these policies of governance and superintendence affecting a future or the present common policies on the level of the European Union.
- Establishing whether there would be a need for EU-wide policy on cultural heritage governance and administration and the ways its future would could be formed with such divergencies.
Chapter 6. Elements of heritage governance and management systems
At the beginning of the analysis of the decentralization, devolution and inclusion of different stake holders in the cultural heritage governance and management, several issues should be appreciated and analysed. These would be the basic components that are playing and are expected to play significant roles in the new academic and international paradigms in that sector. Elements, stakeholders and processes of the heritage systems are to be regarded mostly on the level of their socio-economic reasoning given the assumptions and key limitations made and set. That reasoning will be in close relation to the inclusion of culture and cultural heritage as a fourth competent in the sustainable development matrix next to social, economic and environmental pillar by the The Hangzhou Declaration: Placing Culture at the Heart of Sustainable Development Policies (UNESCO, 2013).
6.1. Museums and monuments, tourism
Museums are an essential part of the heritage superintendence systems. Broadly put, they are collecting, preserving, interpreting and presenting corresponding objects and monuments of a valued period of the past. Since the Napoleonic Wars and the emergence of nationalism, museums played additionally a substantial role in nation-building in the meaning of promoting a specific agenda on shared history by the nation as opposed to the shared history with other peoples. However, their mode of functioning from the 19th century was put to question from the second half of the 20th century on. That mode was challenged mainly on the grounds of more efficient and broader outreach to the public.
Davis describes three basic types of new museum forms from the beginning of the 1970s based on practical and academic development in the field. The first one is the museum through which „community museology” seeks to empower and enrich local inhabitants. As he cites UNESCO`s journal ”Museum” from 1973: „the new type […] seems the most suited to function as a regional museum or as museum for small and medium-sized population centres”. Further introduced were the communication-enhanced museums of the postmodern „new museolology” which were aimed at greater diversification of the curatorial product. The last type is the ecomuseum, that as he uses the famous „necklace” of Davis, encompasses „landscape, sites, territory, memories, nature, tradition, heritage, community” . Thus the ecomuseum comprehends almost all possible earlier introduced concepts of museology plus modernized definitions of heritage including landscapes and the so-called intangible heritage.
That role of the museums and monuments suggest an important place in any heritage agenda. As Richards puts it, museums and monuments are the biggest part of the attractions market, and the focus of urban and regional planning . That is why modern cultural tourism puts them in a special position. The enhanced role of communities and local planning is to try to put museums and monuments in sustainable mode and further battle the elitist character that provide access mainly on the grounds of education and ethnicity. That way, in economic terms, greater access or increase of visits could mean greater financial input for museums, monuments and sites. Consecutively, the steady increase of museum visits is a clear indicator for measuring the success of museums.
One of the most crucial connections between the heritage preservation and communication and the private sector is the tourism industry. As already presented, museums, monuments and sites are the cornerstone of the cultural tourism. It could be added that it may not only serve as a great economic backing of historical heritage – in the forms of providing cultural institutions with their own financial inflows through paid visitations and access, but also provide common sense reasoning of public expenditure, as connected industries would be of increasing political significance. In Europe the connection of heritage and tourism is particurally strong. Culture is „second after monetary considerations on tourist” destination picking by people and they tend to decrease personal expenditure in other areas rather than on cultural activities.
However, mass cultural tourism could lead to unsustainability due to peaks and decreases of visitors. Compromises with heritage interpretations, authenticity and protection could be made due to thus established economic interests. Expanding on the notion made by Power and Scott that the new policy approaches are trying to shift the connection between local development and culture from tourism and construction to export, it could be argued that the same could be said about heritage. So tourism, given the expansion of communication could lose the leading role in driving heritage financing and expansion. Culture could compete better than tourism and construction on a global scale and thus could be turned into a viable sector of the national economies for developing countries such as the case Jamaica and its music industry . Another example would be the digitalization of archives or artefacts, access to which could be offered and sold online. Further, the setting of geographical origin marketing of products based on tangible and intangible heritage could also prove beneficial, without the need of tourism financing it.
6.2. Cultural heritage digitalization
Digitalization is a process that has great importance to most of the spheres of policy developments. That is also true for cultural heritage. In the field of archaeology, that would mean that the finds could be listed, protected and preserved for, virtually, eternity in electronic databases. In regard to architectural monuments, the original facades and elements could be saved for the future with digital photography and scanning. The same is valid about historical landscapes. However, as Alfredo Rohcni argues, the process has two very important aspects – „technological obsolence and the temporary nature of „permanent” storage systems” . So, the digitalization of cultural heritage would require constant expenditure and investments for updating.
As already presented, digitalization could be deployed as a mass level access granted to different stake holders, most importantly to the broader public which is connected to the heritage or to the potential virtual tourists. Furthermore, there are scholars which argue that the provision of online access to cultural heritage is an obligation of the European museums and heritage institutions, given that the right of cultural participation for each and every European citizen is guaranteed by various international, national and European treaties and conventions. That notion is particularly valid during the Coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic or when ensuring the access to persons with special needs.
6.3. Real estate, local governance and citizens
In the case of real estate, the problem of cultural heritage is strongly connected with property rights. Private owners of land below which archaelogical sites are situated or of architectural monuments could very well be against certain preservationist agendas. The national and local authorities could restrain forms of exploitation such as destruction, further building, posing right to access to the concerned and interested citizens or even expropriate real estate property. As Davison concludes, even the most prosperous states do not compensate the owners for the alternative costs of usage of their property . However, as built heritage requires substantial investments for its revitalization and socialization, public-private partnership schemes have started to be adopted by the national authorities in order to increase the amount of investments. In the case of inclusion of investors in the decision-making process of heritage management, positive outcomes could be achieved, as increased heritage preservation agenda would lead to more sub-contracting and financing to construction companies and they would appreciate its viability more in return. Further, the modern archaeological agenda is backing excavations only in cases when there is a need “to resolve a scientific, archaeological issue or when remains are threatened by unavoidable decay, erosion or development” (Pickard, 2011 as cited by ).
The basic connection between the localism agenda and the private business is presented by the development of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Some authors view SMEs as not ideal basis for producing sustainable growth (Gilmore, 2004 as cited by (Hesmondhalgh & Pratt, 2005, 11(1), pp. 10-11)). Besides that economic dilemma, it could be easily argued that SMEs-model appliance would be unstable at least in short term in regards to heritage protection. Thus the relatively new policies and their appreciation could be heavily affected by such introductions.
Local governments are increasingly interested in the field of cultural heritage. As Phillip Cooke points, a lot of cities, like Cologne, are shifting funding from Research and Development towards culture and then based on (Zukin, 1995), he tries to explain that phenomenon with the large growth of employment of creative artists such as designers and authors, growth surpassed only of employment raise in the Silicon Valley. That is why Cooke sets local governance as a bridge between „city history”, „urban cultures, value systems and lyfestyles”, on the one side, and creativity, on the other . Thus the local governments benefit from huge return-on-investment from cultural heritage and collect substantial tax revenue.
While addressing citizens as stakeholders, it should be nevertheless pointed their identity and cultural issues. However, cultural benefits could not be the sole reasoning of citizens and thus their involvement could be not only benefitial and protective towards heritage. Economic rationalism could interfere with cultural values on many levels. As in the cases of real estate investors, decisions of citizens could be influenced by the fluctuations of property value dependent on the specific project or situation. Questionable practices could be accepted on the sole ground of employment opportunities as conservation activities are more labour intensive than normal construction . Additionally, local citizens could find jobs as custodians, tourist guides or benefit from the overall increased dynamism of the local economy in sectors such as creation or revitalization of the accommodation infrastructure, increased trade and transportation industry. An estimation of the employment potential of the cultural heritage shows that for every direct job created in that branch there are 26.7 times more indirect jobs created, a coefficient way greater than the one of the automobile industry, standing at just 6.3.
In conclusion, the presented main elements, stakeholders and issues of heritage management system provide rather contradicting picture. It could be assumed that each of the stakeholders could have economic interests that are against the best possible protection solutions. Thus, in the sustainability framework, the main resource – the cultural heritage itself would not be preserved to its optimal extent. As a system, the different collaborators could have contradicting views and agendas on exploiting it. Keeping in mind these considerations, the reasoning and the imposing of international and supranational bodies of that paradigm on national heritage policies and administration would follow.
Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten
Figure 1 . Elements of heritage governance and management systems
Chapter 7. International and supranational impact
7.1 UNESCO
The role of the UNESCO in the development and application of national policy and administration is rather limited, due to the lack of easily enforceable instruments. Like many international documents, the acts of UNESCO do not provide full and systematic definitions of heritage and its conservation and exploitation needs. Davison even states that the broad teleological interpretation reaches the level of „phychology” and unnatural ammendments such as social and economic development were included in one of the earliest forms of UNESCO regulations .
The unclear definition could be linked two basic explanatory characteristics. The first one would be that the broader definition could provide protection of a wider range of objects, sites and traditions. Thus it would not limit the development of further academic concepts that could supply greater protection or respective policy agendas. The second characteristic, or the social and economic interpretations, are more controversial. At the beginning, the UNESCO is an international organisation and problems such as economic and social inequality across the globe are set high in its agenda. Further, problems of the link between indigenuous cultures and colonialism need the appreciation of various under-represented groups in order to protect heritage that is not considered on equal grounds and even was appreciated as inferior.
In respect to the region of Central and Eastern Europe, the latter concept is of incredible importance. Translated to the local context that means not that minority instead of indigenous rights should be respected and evaluated, undisputedly a problematic question. It is further connected to the ideological and political development of post-Communist societies. However, as later revealed in the dissertation, the process that was prompted mainly by the UNESCO was carried to additional limits by the Council of Europe.
Besides that initial spring of the socio-economic outlining in heritage superintendence, the UNESCO has other functions that should be considered. As Holler and Mazza suggest, the organization could serve as a „watchdog”. Deploying professionals and possessing serious amount of know-how, it could lower the information assymetry in favour of the politicians and the public . An example of that are the various organisations to the UNESCO, such as the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) that provides comprehensive information on heritage at risk since 1999. In that respect, the Council of Europe and the European Union have not yet acquired that level.
Additional differences could be found in concrete policy areas. Digitalisation is a considerable part of the UNESCO agenda on cultural heritage. However, the approach and the accent put are more connected to the core of preservation than to spill-over social and economic positive effects. It is regarded as a way of a sure and lasting form of preservation, as most monuments and objects could not be sustained eternally based on their physical characteristics. Another point of that agenda is combating illicit traffic of cultural goods . Other applications of digitalization such as virtual tours are not adopted en masse, as most of the world is still considered as underdeveloped and digitalization may harm the vital real tourist inflow. Further, as in the case with social and economic outputs, in most of the nation state cases the ICT sector is in its infancy and deployment would be challenging from logistical point of view. However, as further argued, illicit trading as an international phenomenon has serious implication on the Central and Eastern European states.
7.2. Council of Europe
The Council of Europe was established on the principles of heritage and statement of continental uniqueness. Its vision about European cultural heritage has developed slowly from solely practical one - mostly to battle nationalism to common identity described broadly and non-constistently . The reasons for the engagement in that issue are questionable. Pratt suggests comprehensive and wide explanaition - nation states and their democratic legitimacy, ways of expressions and priorities are changing, so establishing a one-way casual link between culture, cultural policy and Member States would not be entirely convincing . But beside its values and cultural exclusiveness in comparison to the rest of the world, the Council of Europe has prompted a wide range policy directed towards heritage management.
At the beginning, most of the actions of the Council of Europe were connected to the technical part of preservation activities and setting-up of common standarts through international law. The mass inclusion of possible stakeholders to cultural heritage preservation could be seen as a gradual process. Based on the historical perspective and analysis of Pickard, some intitial stages could be highlighted. Firstly, the European Charter of the Architectural Heritage was adopted in 1975. Engaged with the architectural heritage of old town centres, the Charter promoted integrated and widened approach, bringing the most encompassing range of possible proffesionals in the field in order to create an industry in its own right. Further, the Convention for the Protection of the Architectural Heritage of Europe from Granada of 1985, called for the participation of cultural associations in the decision-making process, promoting experts as stake holders. The crucial change in attitude towards sustainable development, as a basis for heritage management, and widening of the scope of cultural heritage was stated in 1996 Resolutions of the Fourth conference of European Ministers from Helsinki.
Inclusion of different stakeholders in the Council of Europe heritage preservation framework, after the initial accent on state authorities obligations and the inclusion of further experts, changed with the European Landscape Convention of Florence, 2000. Landscape protection followed a process to “identify and assess [...] through field research by professionals [...] in conjunction with the local people directly concerned” . So engagement of local communes and stakeholders as directly affected by heritage was set.
The most comprehensive set of changes towards decentralisation proposed and introduced by the Council of Europe is the Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage to Society (known as the Faro Convention) from 2005. It provided a new basis for interpretation and enactment of other conventions and affects all established common rules on cultural heritage management. Based on the Convention and the explantory text provided on it by the Council of Europe , several crucial issues for Central and Eastern Europe could be pointed out:
One of the most important accents is the support for integrated approach in dealing with heritage in its broadest possible definition. That would set all assets such as archaeological finds, sites, architectural monuments, traditions to be governed either by a single public authority or a clear system of shared competencies by different institutions be they central, local or of arm`s lenght principle expert bodies. Introducing the private and the private public sector to a new level, complementary activities could be further sourced out of the government. As in the sample of countries later presented, the partial and scattered legislation and practices across the public policies is still very problematic. The integrated approach would certainly need increased funding of extra activities such as deeper involvement in administering more complicated strategic actions.
As called by the Faro convention, cultural heritage is to be a pivotted in economic policy as well. The possibilities of that are numerous. They could start with the classical inclusion in tourism agenda on the cultural basis. Improvement of the information and communication technologies sector could be further strenghtened by the introdution of policies such as digitalisation of existing artefacts inventories or introduction of supporting virtual presentations alongside the physical sites or museums. However, the economic opportunities are increasingly restrained by the steady introduction of more and more sophisticated preservation techniques. That would rather restrict small scale investors such as local authorities or small businesses from economic benefits. An example of that process is the strong opinion against reconstruction activities which could be argued are the most economically benefiting whilst requiring less investments in absolute terms.
The Faro convention also further sets the model of decision-making in the field of cultural heritage. It should encompass not only the relevant authorities and experts such as historians, archaeologists and architects, but further owners, investors, businesses, non-governmental organisations and civil society. The introduction to the conceptually free „heritage community”, as described by Sani, based on neither territory, nor social characteristics , may very well introduce not only industrial, but rather vaguely connected interests that could endanger the role of the locals and the cultural region.
In that respect, empowerment of different groups could be problematic. However, as argued in the case of the „watchdog” funcitons of the UNESCO, local communities could be streghtened by additional interests. As Benhamou comments, there is a danger posed by the assymetrically informed lobbies as in the cases of real estate businesses and non-governmental organizations. Further, experts are prone to pressure from such lobbies, as well as their own peer-pressure, knowledge, preferences and experience . The sum of these may provide to „experts resistance to accept public scrutiny” .
Additional pressure on the cultural heritage polices and management on national level is put by the rise of development-led archaeology and the heritage-related activieties stipulated by Council of Europe protection rules such as the Granada Conevention. It calls for archaeological assessments before big-scale infrastructure projects. Tilley suggests that „heritage industry is not supportive of archaeology” but „challenges it as an interpretative practice”, as the increase in the excavations and other field work does not allow the analysis and interpretation (Tilley, 1989 as cited by ).
7.3. EU Institutions
7.3.1. Ideological roots
The European integration projects, which have turned into the European Union, have had elitist inspiration and beginnings, however, their implementations needed popular support whether through national parliaments or via the European Court of Justice – the citizens themselves. However, the loss of sovereignity, that was a product of the ideas of Romanticism, nationalism and nation states, ideas still strongly rooted in political thinking of the peoples of Europe, proved the need for another form of allegiance – in that case to the European integration projects. Ashworth and Larkham even suggest that „only” with reinventing of the past could Europe ubstan steadily and securely or, in other words, further integration requires common history, heritage and identity. Even though culture is not part of the EU supranational competencies, appreciation of that uniquely European problem exists.
At the start, one of the first common actions on bringing the European identity ahead was the Declaration Concerning European Identity in 1973. It was concerned mostly with the fragility and uncertainty of the state of foreign relations during the Cold War era and was setting the then nine Community Member States againt the forming world regional and ideological blocs. However, the Declaration proposed a functionalist way of developing Europeaness, as rather setting a start than searching for it in the past . The shift of thinking – from functionalism to predominant historicism in forging common ubstantials was the Solemn Declaration of EU from 1983 that cites „Europe`s history and culture” and „the cultural heritage” .
Although political efforts were made in that sphere, the rather under-developed and vague concept of European primordialism, whenever sought in the past or setting a start for its creation based on current political and social standarts, is not experiencing enough creational charge. Initiatives like the Constitution of the European Union and its symbols were halted, and even the Greek crisis and the various issues concerning the European economy have been exploited on the basis of nationhood. These all have greatly restrained the academia in its efforts of conceptualizing the value system of the European identity.
Setting aside the full qualititative concept in its fullest, one of the value-based implications of EU heritage policy agenda is the local heritage as part of its greater localism accent. That would suppose greater inclusion of local stakeholders such as local authorities, communes and small businesses. Based on Ashworth, two ubstantial changes are thus introduced via the European Union. At first, as he puts it, Europe „will be […] of the cities and the regions”, so local past will be increasingly relevant and appreciated. Of course, that notion would be based on the diminishment of national identity. He continues that the so-developed tourism could fuel separatism, but still it would support regionalism and multiculturalism. That notion is being promulgated by the European Commission with it trying to establish common European narrative and cultural heritage interpretation set around multi-culturalism and European identity.
Further the local-global tuning of international cultural tourism, as Ashworth argues, creates a two-tier heritage market. There are two heritage sets of products for the local market and the international market. The purpose of the first is mainly for „state-building objective”, and the second is aimed at export and being more commercial . The introduction of European product thus may lead to different policy agendas on the multi-tiered rather than two-level market. Such developments may put substantial additional challenge to the national heritage management.
7.3.2. Legal base and policies
At the beginning, it should be noted that the scope of action of the European Union on culture and cultural heritage is quite limited. The common agenda was first introduced with the Maastricht Treaty and since then it has been put before in different policy areas in resemblence to the appreciation status of sustainable development when adopting legislation.
The Preamble of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), specifies that the Member States are inspired by the ‘cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe’. However, the level of intervention is restrained to two basic articles in the primary legislation of the European Union providing only subsidiary competence. Article 167 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (the previous Article 151 of the Treaty of Rome) encourages and supports the cooperation between Member States on the grounds of „that Europe’s cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced”. For the purpose of protecting certain cultural goods being part of national heritage, Article 36 of the consolidated version of the TFEU allows prohibitions or restrictions to be established on imports, exports or goods across the common market (Lazar, 2015, pp. 107-124).
The effects of the EU legislation and policy development on national heritage management could be divided in two major groupings. The first one summons these aimed directly at heritage and the second is based on the indirect effects of EU policy – in the fields of tourism, EU funding, decentralization agenda, etc.
Spill-over effects from other domains of EU competencies are on the grounds of inadvertent impact. Organizations such as the Working Group on EU Directives and Cultural Heritage and the European Heritage Legal Forum are collecting and disseminating information of EU legislation that has negative impact on mostly preservation and conservation techniques and practices. They are mostly concerned with around 25 problematic Directives, as these are not subject to National Parliaments approval and lack an effective lobbying from heritage organizations and professionals. Although the European Commission have included cultural heritage in its Manual on Impact Assessment of Legislation in 2009 a challange mostly in the form of communication with academia and heritage specialists remains.
As additional examples, different common market initiatives could be listed. At the beginning, the protected geographic origin legislation influence is rather obvious. Protection of specific production based on tradition and mostly other types of intangible heritage turns heritage exclusive and conflictual across the European intermixed peoples, regions and states.
However, the most important result of the internal market regulations on cultural heritage policies and management is the effect on illicit trade and trafficing of artefacts and archaeological finds. The first one was the Council Regulation (EEC) No.3911/92. It was intended to rule out protected heritage from common intra-EEC exchange by providing return to the Member State of origin. In 2009, the introduction of Council Regulation (EC) No116/2009 applied control in regard to export outside the European borders . Yet, the application and the way of interpretation of the upgraded regulation are mainly arranged by the states alone. Additionally, the established protection regimes may provide huge divergencies on intra-EU level in regards to the application of the regulation. Its adoption by the Bulgarian parliament is an illustrative example of how it totally lost some of its basic characteristics .
Rob Pickard divides the most influential EU policies and legislation concerning heritage protection and management in two categories. The first area is that of urban and spatial planning. The European Commission`s European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) adopted in 1999 and the Guiding Principles for the Sustainable Spatial Development of the European continent(CEMAT) proposed shortly after in 2000 are recommending principles such as preserving architectural ensembles and high architectural standarts for new buildings. The second policy area is based on the environment. It is even enacted in EU legislation. As early as 1985, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was legislated through Directive 85/337/ EEC concerning assessing the impact of construction projects to the environment in a substantially broad view that included cultural heritage. It was further amended with the Directive 97/11/EC in 1997. Additionally, case-by-case scenario is strengthened with legislation in the field of strategic urban and spatial planning. However, the Commission estimated in 2004 that the different national definitions of cultural heritage have led to significant divergencies of the Directive application.
Additionally, important set of policies promuglated by the European Union in the field of cultural heritage are those seeking the establishment of a common sector. Setting aside the main tourism agenda, some other actions in each end of the heritage market could be listed. Valuable source of information in that case is the Mapping Report of the European Commission presenting the various policy initiatives, as spill-over effects and double use are increasingly difficult to estimate and evaluate.
At first, the Council Work Plan for Culture of 2011-2014 includes Priority Area C which is based on Skills and Mobility. Such policies could create a common pool of culture proffesionals which in respect to cultural heritage may be curators, conservation specialist, architects, etc. That could result in the elimination of some of the inner-EU defficiencies such as experts overload or their respective scarcity. However, it could lead to national systems losing further valuable human resources and hamper their capacity to not only upgrade, but even sustain their preservational, conservational and interpretational needs.
Secondly, the Work Plan calls for establishment of common products. That is sought through Policy Area D – Cultural Heritage including Mobility of Collections. Such process may very well lead to universal supply of heritage, but the final outcome is not neccessary to be entirely benefitial for all the national stakeholders. It could popularize collections from not so well-developed touristically cultural institutions and museums, but at the same time it could lead to additional deepening of the division of core-periphery touristic destinations if museum collection mobility is just limited to big museums. Further, except for the controversial results, the exchange of artefacts and exhibitions would undoubtedly be of great curatorial and managerial expences as travel would need technical and administrative efforts.
Additional intiatives on the setting of a universal heritage market are these based on geographical basis. The adoption of the Council of Europe European Cultural Routes, „Crossroads of Europe - Carrefours d`Europe”, European Destinations of Excellence (EDEN), The European Heritage Label are only some of the projects based on the idea and notion of European Heritage. Although they present some positive opportunities for local cultural operators or national authorities, as argued above, they may lead to multi-tiered market with huge divergence between well-positioned huge monuments and museums and underappreciated local heritage, burdening the latter with addtional administrative and marketing stress.
The digitalization of the cultural heritage on the level of the whole European Union would mean that its research in various aspects could be supported. The increased and eased access to information by scholars for different finds or for new techniques of preservation could be greatly benefitial in economic terms as well. However, common standarts or at least compatabilty of the information and communication technological systems across the European Union is of great importance in order to achieve practicality in that process. Those are some of the reasons why the European Commission seeks the digitalization of cultural heritage as one of its soft policies in the sector.
The European Union puts digitalization in broader definition in comparison to the UNESCO, for example, including experience enhancement techniques for visitors such as 3D visualisation. However, in regard to application on-site, their experimental character as well as their „financial and technological unsustainability” are the reasons for them to be avoided by the management of cultural heritage institutions . In spite of that, the creation and development of the EUROPEANA digital database intended to collect information of the European libraries, museums, galleries and archives, could be considered as a rather successful digitalisation example.
7.3.3. Funding
The cultural heritage policy on the EU level is relatively newly developed, however, its monetary value is steadily increasing since the first targeted program in the area – Raphael. There are 27 million Euro earmarked for heritage from the Creative Europe programme and 180 million Euro were spent for the sector by the Framework Programme 7 . The Sctuctural Funds in the 2007-2013 budgetary framework estimations reach 4.5 billion Euro allocated for heritage – 3.2 billion from the European Regional Development Fund and further 1.2 billion from the European Agricultural Fund for Regional Development. Additonal 100 million were designated for research in the field for that single period . Broadening the financing to the communication, socialisation and interpretation, only the European Regional Development Fund was providing 2,2 billion Euro for upgrading and creation of cultural infrastrucutre and over half a billion for cultural services.
In regard to the influence of funding on heritage policy and management, some additional factors besides its monetary value should be considered. At first, the Structural Funds of the 2007-2013 financial framework were directed towards regions and social cohesion, rather than simply towards nation states. In other words, they were proposing and promulgating some of the basic ideas of sustainable socio-economic development and put the understanding of cultural heritage from one as a fiscal burden to one as a potential growth factor. Secondly, they were to be managed by cooperation of the Union, Member States and the regions, as stated by the general regulations . That way the European Structural Funds influenced the heritage management systems of the Central and Eastern European States in substantially different quantitative and qualititative way. Besides the institutional changes there were also substantial funding which additionally requested local actors, indeniably further stimulating decentralization of the cultural heritage management systems, as the control over the financial management of the system would easily spread to control over the strategic management and decisions. Application and deployment for European funding thus proved rather challenging for the Member States as well as for their respective regions and stakeholders, as local actors were often initially uninformed and ill-prepared for the funding opportunity applications.
Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten
Figure 2 . System of EU influence over the national heritage governance
Nevertheless, the EU policy on cultural heritage management should consider the enormous differences on nation-state level. As presented by Klamer, Mignosa and Petrova, the system of protection in countries like Austria, Germany and Spain is based on decentralization, whereas in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Norway it is set around a centralized, but politically independent authority of experts and professionals. The same could be acknowledged for the main objectives of policy development – in Austria, Cyprus, Ireland and Portugal the accent is on listing rules providing different level of protection, whereas in Bulgaria, Greece and Italy, these are aimed at cultural tourism and in the United Kingdom at sustainability. Even regions have their own agenda – as Sicily and the Belgian communities on intangible heritage, traditions and local folklore . These divergences lead to great difference on public funding. For example, 62% of public culture expenditure in Greece is being spent on museums and monuments, whereas in Denmark the corresponding share is just 2% .
Part II. Central and Eastern Europe. Case studies
Chapter 1. Central and Eastern European nation states
1.1. Authoritarian and Communist legacies and their effect
The traditional appreciation of cultural heritage in a given nation state is the basis upon which the respective policies and management are established. Inertion and the established views of the stakeholders on preservation is especially valid for academia and experts. Practices and technical education are to be changed with greater diffuculty rather than those amongst the public and the politicians. That is why historical considerations on cultural heritage policies and management should be taken into account when dealing with the current state of the systems. The situation in Central and Eastern Europe is rather illustrative because of the highly politicized and ideological views that dominated the experts and the professionals, the public and the authorities.
A good example of these policies is Slovenia, where heritage, especially religious, was left legally and institutionally unprotected, as well as malfunded due to nationalization, until the Yugoslav-Soviet split (Council of Europe, 1998, p. 36). The similar process of „ideological defrost” with one of its aspects -taking care of heritage after initial neglect – is reported by Mecu and Mecu in Communist Romania after 1960. The transition from Bolshevik to „national-communist” regime allowed the Romanian Communist Party apparatus to seek popularity „through tradition”. After 1970 a new wave of such policies even developed the „so-called protochronism” - frivolous historical interpretations that presented major „world discoveries and inventions” as previously done by Romanians.
The nation states under Soviet domination have also developed rather restrained form of cultural tourism. Tourism was regarded mainly as „inexpensive leisure” and international incoming tourism was rather limited and under strict state supervision (Murzyn, 2008, p. 327). Thus one of the most important independent monetary input for preservation and conservation activities was left underdeveloped. The mark of the closed borders and the „Iron Curtain” was especially harmful as internal economic difficulties restricted internal travel and visitations to cultural sites and museums.
However, some positive arguements about the Socialist heritage management could be pointed out. At first, internationalism was one of the main ideological concepts, especially valid for the initial years of the ruling regimes. That meant nationalistic agenda was relatively suppressed. As Bartosiewisz et al. argue based on Milisauskas, 1990 and Kiszely, 2001, that in Soviet-dominated Central and Eastern Europe ethnohistory as a driving force for archaeological interpretation was not deployed as much as it has happened after the end of the Cold War (Bartosiewisz & al., 2011, p. 307).
Further, Communism allowed for the establishment of some positive opportunities. Based on Palang et al., they could be divided in two categories. In respect to landscape as heritage, Central and Eastern Europe has some distinctive differences from the core of Western Europe. The more volatile major political, organizational and cultural changes created a situation where landscapes have much more diversity and thus more blurred connection with the present, or more diffucult appreciation as cultural heritage. Additionally, some of the immaterial heritage of Central and Eastern Europe has the basic comparative advantage to Western Europe in the issue of preservation. The levels of urbanization and globalization there were lower, thus preserving more agricultural and traditional population (Palang & al., 2006, p. 355).
1.2. Transformation from Communism to free market economies
The transformation of the Communist nation states from socialism to free market societies has been extremely traumatic. Svob-Dokic and Obuljen argue that the fall of the totalitarian regimes in Central and Eastern Europe meant that the previous cooperation or at least notion of each other`s culture on ideological basis was over. The culture policies concentrated more on local issues and the loss of concept on development was sought to be compensated with the implementation of new European paradigms . Since the 1980s, with the increasing popularity of the notion of „European cultural heritage”, the range of Europe has started to move away from its political core to the South and the East, although the semantics of European history is still mainly connected with Western Europe , Central and Eastern European countries turned to the Council of Europe for filling that void in their heritage interpretation concept. The Western policies have been but slowly put in place. The East European states started to deploy private fundung as an option in the mid 1990s and tax cuts for the sector since the 2000s.
Further, the opening towards the rest of Europe has had implications on tourism. The political and economic changes coincided with the segmentation of the tourism industry (Jansen-Verbeke, 1996 as cited by ). The „internal” Communist-bloc tourism shifted towards Western Europe, trying to present new or rediscovered cultural identities, which are part of „a wider European identity”. As hinted above, the notion of cultural and especially cultural heritage economic benefits besides tourism were undeveloped thus cultural diplomacy and cultural tourism were the main political and policy concerns for the sector.
Additionally, the foreign investments led to mass development projects in these states. One of the major problems of globalization and internationalization, not only of tourism, but also in finance and the rest of the economy, in respect to cultural heritage, has been the rapid change of the architectural style and coflicting construction objects. It has created either huge commercial areas not representing and fitting into the local traditions or „gentrified inner-city area with short-term or weekend residents”. The huge influx of investments posed yet another serious conflict between the pre-supposed stakeholders, as policy of protecting heritage would be threatened by entrepreneurs, local residents and realty-owners, whose businesses and property value are steadily increasing. In conclusion, the mass privatisation combined with the neglect of cultural heritage and the major touristic influx, created a perfect storm for the sector in Central and Eastern Europe.
One of the issues of cultural history in Central and Eastern Europe has been the monuments of the totalitarian past. The value to the society and the estimation of the Socialist imprint posed a threath to the sole existence of such heritage. Contested legacy, however, could be seen as part of an overall global process. Such conflicts could be pointed between other monuments as well on more simple grounds such as funding allocations or importance of infrastructure development project.
1.3. Comparative analysis of nation states
In order the comparative approach to be sound and illustrative, the sampling of cases should be based on several considerations. Out of eleven nation states of Central and Eastern Europe being Member States of the European Union, the analysis would consider only four of them. Alongside pure statistical reasoning, the inquiry could be put on states which used to be sovereign in the Socialist bloc. Such limitations could circle out aggressive post-independence heritage agenda based on significant threats to its integrity and existence. Thus, policies and especially administration of heritage could hold as much historical and/or ethnographic consistency as possible, due to the lesser attention of voters, lesser role in re-establishing political legitimacy, etc. Simply put, it would present the biggest challenges of the Council of Europe and the EU policies in their mildest forms.
Excluding states as Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the USSR and their respective successors from the specific region would leave Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland. Further, the so received sample could also be representing equal sub-regional comparison with two pairs of countries from Central and from South Eastern Europe (the Balkans). As such the sample could gather characteristics of very different types of cultural heritage, different types of management, even of totalitarian experiences.
Most importantly, as presented further, each of the state analysed represents a valuable set of variables, given a comparable historical marker. In the case of Poland, the heritage system is backed by serious academic and political attention. In Hungary, on the other hand, political processes could not provide sustainable institutional framework. Bulgaria and Romania are providing evidence for respectively centralization and decentralization in Balkanic context.
1.4. Indicators for analysis
As previously stated comparison of policy and management of cultural heritage is a controversial task. In their very deep analysis of that problem Fernandez-Blanco, Herrero and Prieto-Rodriguez share the notion that empirical evaluation of policies could not be comprehensive as cultural heritage does not employ the market to its fullest, there is no way to measure economic value and especially social benefits. However, they cite the work of Weil (1994) on museums and his conclusion that comparison of outputs and imputs of museum activity is „among the most promising ways” where performance indicators could be employed . Scholars, such as Klamer, Mignosa and Petrova, in line with various formats of working groups to the UNESCO, the Council of Europe and the European Union, suggest that the problem is mostly due to the „lack of homogenous quantitative and qualititative data”, rather than being mainly theoretical one.
As Murzyn-Kupisz summarizes most of the crucial existing academic literature, there are several potential spheres of socio-economic sustainable development measurements. Besides hardly estimated value based indicators, as economic marking could be stated the direct income from conservation and socializaion activities, where visits play an important role. Further indirect employment and revenue could be deployed as well as considerations of changes in the general economic structure and tax revenues. As for the local communities, a valuable point to the current work that is made from Murzin-Kupisz is the „creation of social capital” , in other words the newly-established horizontal links between stake holders.
Further, the comparison on that level would concentrate as much as possible on internal estimation of data on cross-national level would further add more variables and thus make any conclusions more questionable. One of the basic arguements for policy development proposed by both the European Union and the Council of Europe is the cross-cultural communication . Tourism, based on heritage visitation, could be considered one of the simplest options for improving and developing the historical patrimony. Thus, a measurment of neighbour, European Union and Council of Europe origin of visitations in nation-state sites could be considered a good indication. However, statistical indicators are not well developed. The same conclusion is valid for the exchanges of exhibitions and collections amogst museums and other types of intra-regional cooperation.
In the comparison of the selected countries, political ideology as a driver for policy implementation and reforms would be ommited. As heritage is still a new field of politics, Holler and Mazza observe that there is not a sufficient division on the the left-right axis in the case of public expenditure . Although much of the academic literature and experts report include such considerations, the analysis could not encompass the political dynamics at its fullest.
At last, the direct impact of EU funding would be hard to measure across the sample of countires. The already stated problems of overlapping, double-use of funds and spill-over effects from other policy areas would be challenging. Funds could be used on different priorities, only one or some of them may be connected to heritage. Inkei points out that even when cultural patrimony is not a stated allocation priority, the funds may be used on such projects.Restoration and renovation of built heritage could be calculated as an investment for higher education as in the case of Liszt Music Academy and as urban regeneration as Zsolnay Centre in Hungary.
1.5. Data used fot the comparative analysis
As previously discussed, the success of the newly adopeted policy developments in the cultural heritage governance across the sampled nation states of Central and Eastern Europe would be tested not only by qualititative data, but also by quantitative data. Additionally, it was further discussed that the avalaible statistics on cultural heritage are rather limited. Based on the theoretical aspects presented above, there are also limited datasets that allow for comparisons across the sampled counties providing for similar indicators, similar metadata for all of them.
At first, these would be the quantitative and qualititative reports of the Compedium of Cultural Policies and Trends in Europe. They are part of a database of cultural policy country information that present developments and trends, legal basis and funding of culture and additional related issues. The profiles are aimed at proving a ground for comparative analysis and benchmarking across Europe, primarily on the basis of „cultural diversity, intercultural dialog and social cohesion”. Set as an initiative of the Steering Committee for Culture of the Council of Europe, the database is created by independent experts, but in councultaion with the given state authorities (Compedium. Cultural Policies and Trends in Europe, 2019). However, the reports provide not only factology and data, but a level of analysis and even policy critique.
Other valuable source of information on national cultural heritage policies and management is the HEREIN System. It is a network of national central level public administrations that deal with heritage issues based around the Council of Europe. Thus besides its function of monitoring the implementation of the conventions and other initiatives of the Council and advising the Steering Committee for Culture, Heritage and Landscape (CDCPP), the HEREIN System is also a tool for comparing national policies and know-how. That is being fulfilled by posting National reports, based on agreed system of criteria and markers, by appointees or officials of respective ministries or governmental agencies (Council of Europe, 2020).
The quality of the data provided could be estimated and evaluated by two main characteristics. At first, it is collected on, as aforementioned, set of criteria that evolve around issues of „sustainable development, dissemination and awareness-raising, centres of innovation and digitisation of cultural assets” (Council of Europe, 2020). The second aspect to be considered is the fact that the reports are done by national apointees. However, the politics of Council of Europe and its conventions – incorporated into national legislation, but still with voluntary participation and adoption, would not be a reason for suspecting diversion of facts or inconsistent conclusions, something that is acknowledged by the current dissertation.
On the issues of the impact of the EU financing on cultural heritage policy and management there would be employed the reports of the European Expert Network on Culture and Audiovisual (EENCA). The Network was set up in 2010 as a cooperation of the Interarts Foundation and the Culture Action Europe, based on a public tender by the Directorate General for Education and Culture (DG EAC) of the European Commission. The purpose of it is the assessment of cultural policies on regional, national and European level and most importantly, academic basis for policy development (European Expert Network on Culture and Audiovisual, 2020).
In the used reports, the major accent is put to the EU Structural Funds in the financial period of 2007-2013 and their impact on regional cultural improvements. The aim of the reports is to evaluate the framework on the basis of positive and negative effects and establish better terms for the Cohesion policy and Operational Programs in the 2014 – 2020 finacial period. They are based on analysis of policy documents of European, national and regional levels, interviews from fund managers as the data is practically impossible to find in clear and consistent way, and, at last, case studies (Ilczuk & Nowak, Culture and the Structural Funds in Poland, 2012) (Varbanova, 2012) (Suteu, 2012) (Inkei, 2012).
The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) is the official statistical agency of UNESCO established in 1970 (UIS, 2021). The data used from their databases is concentrated on the overall employment in the cultural sectors in Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary, their percentage of the overall employment as well as the number of persons employed in the cultural heritage, natural heritage and intangible heritage sectors and their percentage of the overall cultural employment in the mentioned countries. Most of the data is extracted from labour force surveys created by sampling of interviewed households. Poland is not included in the revised statistics.
Other sources of information and support of the analysis would be included besides the reports already estimated. The accessibility of data or its under-development would pose the need to incluse only some of the comparable issues. Across the sample of the countries, objectives and strategies would not be revised to their fullest, as they are constantly changing and often contradicting, so a clear appreciation and analysis would not be possible. Academic literature and poor documentation of reports is to be noted especially for Bulgaria and Romania. In the case of Romania, statistics of cultural heritage, especially on cultural tourism, museums visits and other relevant indicators, are not only underdeveloped, but almost non-existent.
Chapter 2. Poland
2.1. Historical Developments
The notion and the need of cultural heritage protection in Poland have ocurred relatively early. The first heritage museum was inaugurated by the czar of the Russian Empire in 1862 as the Museum of Fine Arts (Aronsson & Elgenius, 2011, p. 11). The specialized Museum of Industry and Agriculture was founded in Warsaw in 1875 (Hudson, 2014 as cited by (Porczyński & Vargová, 2020, p. 38)). The first Act on Protection of the Historical and Art Monuments was set shortly after the unification and independence of Poland in 1918 (Gassowski, 2007, p. 161). However, the development of the totalist, systematic approach to heritage across the world coincided with the period of the imposing of Soviet domination and consequent Communist regime. The new institutional basis meant that the usual ideological approach to heritage was put in place. In the field of archaeology, there was adopted a historical interpretation that was politically influenced as well. It was mainly occupied with the genesis of the Slavic people, the Slavic character of the former Prussian territories, regained after the Second World War and was restrained by „correctness” or the lack of any notion of contested heritage of history with the other Socialist Central and Eastern European states (Marcianiak, 2011, p. 181).
Besides the central authority of the Ministry of Culture and Arts, the Cultural Division of the Central Committee of the Polish Communist Party was setting policy agendas as well. However, aside of ideological interpretations, funding and sufficient level of protection was not neglected (Ilczuk, Poland, 2015, p. Chapter 1.), besides some examples where state-owned investors and state-run archaeological institutions had overcame legislation if a development-led excavation would be too costly or if they were national security concerns (Gassowski, 2007, p. 163). Further, Polish archaeologists were quite active outside Poland, a tradition that was revived in the beginning of the 2000s with expeditions to archaeological sites in Egypt, Guatemala, Ukraine, Cyprus, Syria, the Russian Federation, etc. (Kolodziejczyk, 2015, pp. 81-90).
2.2. System of authorities
The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage was the first to be affected by the political changes that followed the regime-change. The HEREIN Organisations report reveals that its functions has evolved to mainly preparing and proposing legislation. Also it is controlling semi-independent institutes which have competencies over different fields of cultural heritage. The National Institute of Museology and Public Collections Protection is in charge of collections, exhibitions and artefacts and possess some level of control over museums. However, The National Heritage Board of Poland and the Monuments Protection Department to the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage have quite limited competencies and provide mostly logistical and information suppport to the sector. The overall control is devolutioned to the Voivodships and their resective Voivodship Inspectors (Organisations - Poland, 2018) (Council of Europe, 2020).
The General Inspectror of Monuments is one of the most important administrative figures in the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in Poland, as presented by the HEREIN country profile. Possessing the rank of Secretary of State in the Ministry, the occupant of that post is in charge of the National Heritage Board of Poland, the main research and standart-setting body in the field of monuments protection. Additionally, the General Inspector gives assent to the appointments of local Voivodship Inspectors of Monuments done by the local Voivods and further supervises them, part of which is the national inventory - in the case of Poland – the sum of the Voivodship inventories of heritage (Poland HEREIN System, 2018).
However, Oniszczuk argues that the General Inspector of Monuments serves mostly as an appeal body, as since 1996 Voivods are in charge of local inspectors, the central heritage bodies have little control over them, and the interests of local contruction companies often prevail. Decentralization has further led to different documentation procedures, different interpretation of heritage protection and even of the Polish Criminal Code. That all have pressured the Ministry of Culture to accept the need of re-centralization of heritage control over real estate development in the 2004-2013 Strategy for the Developmnet of Culture (Oniszczuk, 2014, p. 64). Additional substantial step was the notion of the need of private financing to implement the goals of the National Revitaliation Plan for heritage of 2014. With the coordinative role of the Ministry of Development, models and practices of public-private partnerships were systematized for future use and reference (Jelincic & al., 2017, p. 80).
Figure 3 . Organigramme of the Polish system of cultural heritage governance
Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten
2.3. Preventive archaeology
The growing role of preventive archaeology, due to the increased number of infrastructure constuction, places the issue to greater importance. In Poland, there is no centralized „special institution in charge for setting up standarts, controlling and conducting rescue archaelogy”, a function that was up to the the Institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences during the Socialist regime (Marcianiak, 2011, pp. 183,192).The Centre for Archaeological Rescue Research (after 2002 Centre for the Protection of Archaeological Heritage) was created in 1995 directrly under the Minister of Culture in order to cope with the preventive archaeology due to highway construction projects and actually controlled all regional conservation bodies (Gassowski, 2007, p. 165), however, these functions were rather short-lived.
Investors were to pay the whole cost of the development-led excavations, only in the case of the highway contruction they were covered by the State (Gassowski, 2007, pp. 164,165). However, in 2007, the Polish constitutional court ruled that financing of archaeological research exclusively by the investor would be unconstitutional (Oniszczuk, 2014, p. 63). The decision has not had a great negative effect overall in terms of heritage conservation and development-led preventive excavations have had a serious role in financing the heritage sector. That was especially true to the university education, where they provided for the cultivation of lots of academics and experts (Marcianiak, 2011, p. 183).
Local museums are also to receive the artefacts collected after preventive excavations rather than the conducting archaeological teams and institutions. Such a rule is in favour of communities, their culture, their identity and may provide them with some additional income from tourism. However, as Gassowski points out, many times local museums have refused to accept finds due to lack of storage room. Although funds have been spent on storage facilities (Gassowski, 2007, p. 166), a constant effective intra-museums system of sharing space is to be established in order to face huge finds. That way a major part of the museum`s dedication to the local community have been cleared.
2.4. Private sector involvement
The private firms dealing with cultural heritage in Poland are relatively developed, but they are still supplementing the public sector, rather than challenging it (Ilczuk & Nowak, Culture and the Structural Funds in Poland, 2012, p. 5). However, the private sector is dominating the field of architectural buildings and monuments. As early as 2000, the greatest part of the Polish immovable heritage was owned by individuals – 30%, whereas the state on central level was possesing only 15% (The System of Cultural Heritage Protection report as cited by (Ilczuk, Poland, 2015, p. Ch.4)).
Decentralization in conducting excavations and the inclusion of free enterprises provided a boost for the independent private archaelogists. The real estate developers are searching the cheapest possible archaeology contractors. That could lead to questionable practices on the grounds of academic and preservationist ethics. Oniszczuk presents extreme additional conditition, such as 24/7 archaeology tendered by the General Directorate of National routes and Motorways. Then, local museums actually possess most of the specialized storage spaces and thus as being competitors may pressure the private excavators (Oniszczuk, 2014, p. 65). However, such processes created the opportunity for private firms to acquire not only storage space but also their own laboratories (Organisations - Poland, 2018, p. 12). The independent researchers are further constrained by the fact that all the finds and artefacts are still state property, so full economic benefit is being denied.
2.5. Volunteers
An important development in the field of cultural heritage management in Poland is the increase of volunteers. Set relatively early in comparison to other Central and Eastern European states, the Act on Public Benefit Activity and Voluntary Work adopted in April 2003 provided working framework for that way of inclusion of heritage-interested citizens (Ilczuk, Poland, 2015, p. Ch.4). It is estimated that in 2010 around 10% of 12 000 foundaitions and 71 000 assosiations were mainly active in „national and regional traditions, monuments and places of memory or […] run museums (Klon/Jawor research, 2010 as cited by (Ilczuk, Poland, 2015, p. Ch.4))”
Additionally, the volunteers receive training in the field of protection as part of conservation and prevention of crimes against cultural heritage. On such basis, since 2003, the „Voluntary Guardians of Monuments” are contracted by the local authorities with guarding of their community sites. Similar training (Organisations - Poland, 2018, p. 14), could be recieved by the national authorities as well. The National Heritage Board of Poland with the support and cooperation from the police, the Interpol, the Polish border guard and the customs chamber has trained more than 300 people in the field of protection of archaeological heritage and prevention of crimes against archaeological monuments since its establishment in 2007 until 2014 (Oniszczuk, 2014, pp. 63, 64).
However, there is grassroots public participation that is hardly controlled on the basis of skills. The program „Traces of the Past – students adopt monumest” is an example of that. The program started in 2001 and has involeved more than 20 000 students and more than 1200 schools that have been preserving and even restoring heritage monuments. Although the process have been coordinated with the local authorities which are competent in the field (Access and Interpretation - Poland, 2014), the probable lack of application of the right set of technical skills pose a risk to the conservation.
2.6. Impact of the EU Structural funds
The impact of the EU Structural funds on the Polish cultural heritage policy and management is considerable. The European Experts Network on Culture report of Ilczuk and Nowak reveals that in Poland the allocations were the greatest in absolute numbers across not only the sample but in the whole of the European Union, mostly connected with the size of the country. In regard to the European Regional Development Fund and the European Social Fund in the financial period of 2007-2013, one unified Operational Program on Culture was not adopted. However, there was a priority of Culture and Cultural Heritage in the Operational Program Infrastructure and Environment. In respect to decision-making and access there were two significant facts, based on the report of Ilczuk and Nowak.
The first one is the regionalization of the application process. At all levels of local governance - provinces, districts and municipalities/communities, there was an already established notion of the importance of culture and significant part of them have created even their own long-term strategies for development of that sector. Provinces (Voivodships) were included in the management of the Structural Funds with their own Regional Operational Programs. That process met problems such as lack of efficient training and administrative capacity, with underdeveloped financial and objectives settings, and further with increased burden due to regional co-financing requirements.
Addionally, as Ilczuk and Nowak reveal, the overall accent of Regional Operational Programs in the financial period 2007-2013 in the field of culture was on heritage protection, tourism, urban development and recreation. Out of the total cultural allocations of the regional programs, mostly in the range of 6-8%, the share of predicted funding for protection and preservation of heritage was well under the national level of public financial support. Most of the projects that have been adopted are in respect to build infrastructure – renovations and building, as well as reconstruction of monuments (Ilczuk & Nowak, Culture and the Structural Funds in Poland, 2012, pp. 5-11). It should be taken into account that systematic regionalization attempts in regard to EU Structural funds startet as early as 2003 (Ilczuk, Poland, 2015, p. Ch1.).
Besides the positive effects that the EU Structural Funds have impacted on devolution of decision-making in heritage management, the second major conclusion that could be drawn by the Ilczuk and Nowak report is that they have empowered cultural operators as well. As the Operational programs were designed to include applications from national and regional cultural institutions rather than only administration, it could be easily argued that the process has lead to the acquisition of more managerial skills, capacity and market approach from them. In the case of Poland, where the civil society involvement was higher in comparison to the sample of countries regarded by the analysis, that meant non-governmental organisations were included as well. Their activity was marked mostly by religious institutions that acted mainly in the field of built heritage (Ilczuk & Nowak, Culture and the Structural Funds in Poland, 2012, pp. 22-3), as they were representing the second largest chunk of immovable monuments ownership (The system of Cultural Heritage Protection report, 2000 as cited by (Ilczuk, Poland, 2015, p. Ch4.)).
Further, the activity of archaeological research is connected to the infrastructure development. In that case the most important contributor is the funding coming from the European Union. Thus the Structural Funds are providing great fluctuation in the flow of the normal scientific activity. With the end of the 2007-2013 financial framework there was registered a substantial drop of archaeological activity (Oniszczuk, 2014, p. 64). Such uncertainty poses risks not only to the experts and their work, but also to the heritage community.
A major result of the European Structural and Cohesion Funds influence on heritage management in Poland is the increased popularity of reconstruction of archaeological sites. Reconstruction as described by Stubb is the „reassembly of a partially or completely collapsed structure”. The practice in Poland represents a clear accent on monetary outcome through intended rise of visits and additional tourism revenues, rather than seeking an enhancement of awareness-raising or socialization . Newby argues that it could have some positive implications such as enhanced environmental sustainability and better socialization of heritage, but these could not be straightforward. Possible false understanding and appreciation by the audience and compromises with scientific integrity „will inevitably degrade the quality of the heritage environment”. Although he does not oppose reconstruction outright, he claims that it could not be priority of conservation policy . However, in the overall practice, without regard to specific case studies, it should be noted that in the course of the Second World War, more than 70% of the Polish material cultural heritage was either looted, destroyed or damaged beyond repair , so reconstruction on the grounds of ethics could be accepted aspartially justified.
2.7. Conclusions on Poland
The effects of the decentralisation and inclusion of various stake holders of the heritage community in Poland are rather contradicting. As Marcianiak summarizes, the research and the technical archaeological work is pretty much dictated by the private sector, rather than by the academic considerations. The right to excavate is „hardly controlled” and the public access to heritage is based not on the level to which they value it, but on market principle (Marcianiak, 2011, p. 182). The inclusion of volunteers and locals that became quite popular after the political reforms, however, started during the Communist regime with initiatives such as the photographing of the archaeologically sensitive areas from 1978 (Knowledge and protection - Poland, 2014). In spite of such negative notions, there are plenty of academic discussions and public campaigns which raise awareness to the issue and still the most important heritage institutions such as the Heritage Board are not based on the arm`s length principle with independent expert control but under a political figure – a state secretary.
Chapter 3. Hungary
3.1. Historical perspective
Attention to the issue of cultural heritage preservation and conservation is traditionally strong in Hungary. The Hungarian National Museum opened as early as 1802 (Pap & Palfi, 2010, p. 197) on the initiative of the ethnically Hungarian noble Ferenc Széchenyi and the first exhibition was opened on the following year (Apor, National Museums in Hungary , 2011, p. 407). Based on Adelcreutz, the basic steps of legal development of cultural heritage protection started with the adoption of the Preservation Act of 1881 which was in force till 1949. The next step occured in the 1960s, with the Decree-Law on Protection of Museum Objects and the Amendment of 1975, in line with other Warsaw-pact governments timing of policy change. The Decree-Law arranged tight political control on heritage management, with the Ministry of Culture only consulted by the National Board for Protection of Historic Monuments and the government taking decisions on designation of state protection of monuments, sites and artefacts or allowing any excavations. However, the state covered excavation costs instead of developers until the 1990s and started buying individual finds and valuable objects, which proved difficult due to lack of funds (Adlercreutz, 1993, pp. 20-22) and could have stimulated treasure hunting.
3.2. Organisational structure
Based on the HEREIN reports on Hungary, its organisatorial structure could be estimated as rather changing and fluid made. On the central level of authority, the cultural heritage of Hungary used to be governed by the Ministry of Interior, which later changed to the Prime Minister`s Office. However, it holds only overall responsibilities and competencies and administration of the sector are shared with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Ministry of Human Resources. The Ministry of Public Administration and Justice was in charge of the inventory of the moveable heritage objects, however these are temporally transferred to the Budapest Department of Architecture and Cultural Heritage (Herein System, 2016, pp. 63,65) (Herein System, 2020). Previously the obligations of the Ministry of Rural Development were conducted by the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Agriculture and other ministries that held competencies over rural regions. Respectively, the functions of the Ministry of Human Resources were part of the portfolio of the Prime Minister`s Office (with the rank of a Ministry). The rather overlapping portfolios and personal obligations of the ministers are quite normal for the politics of post-2000s Hungary. As further presented, that process of volatility affects not only the political elite but the professional administrators and their organisations as well. It could be easily argued that not only integrated approach towards heritage could be established that way, but also the amount of coordination needed and the possibility of its provision could endanger the whole sector.
Landscape heritage, as a relatively new academic and legal subject, continues to be governed by other state institutions – under the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Rural Development or other rather changing ministerial portfolios. The system of National Parks protects landscape heritage. Their Ranger Services also conduct site-monitoring on archaeological excavations, besides park obligations. The regional Inspectorate for Environmental Protection, Nature Conservation and Water Management issues permits for landscape interventions such as construction.
Further, the HEREIN report reveals that the Gyula Forster National Office for Cultural Heritage Management ( Forster Gyula Nemzeti Örökséggazdálkodási és Szolgáltatási Központ ) under the control of the Prime Minister`s Office is the main agency with legal responsibilities to built and archaeological patrimony. It formed in 2012 as a merger of the National Office for Cultural Heritage that used to enforce the currently non-existent integrated approach since 2001 and the National Trust of Monuments of Hungary, which resembled the National Trust of the UK . Its staff supports the sector with reasearch and advice, issues export licences and manages architectural, archaeological sites as well as collections of artefacts. The Inspectorate of Cultural Goods is an institution that is managing movable cultural items on national level. It keeps the database of all movable cultural objects, classifies and enlists new ones (Herein System, 2016).
On the regional level, the regional county Departments of Architecture and Cultural Heritage issue permits on construction and other interventions regarding built sites. Before 2012 such permits were issued by the National Office for Cultural Heritage. The Budapest Department of Architecture and Cultural Heritage is considerably more empowered. Besides its permitting powers, as aforementioned, it is also managing the national archaeological inventory and the list of all architectural sites. It further holds the power of arbitration over decisions of other township offices and acts on building permits (Herein System, 2016, pp. 2-9, 64-5), another rather unusual feature for a regional department.
The question of the authority being stripped off the National Office of Cultural Heritage is a major issue in the conflict between real estate development and preservation of cultural heritage. To some extent it provided decentralization of decision-making similar to the one which has occured in Poland. However, it is worth exploring the reason why the Budapest Department of Architecture and Cultural Heritage, a local body, was to step in as an appeal and over-arching institution and even as a national inventory manager. An easy explanation for that is the placing of these powers under a more suitable political figure than the respective minister, in that case the mayor of Budapest. Several hints of economic and political rationale behind that administrative change are presented by Winkler who argues that it led to heritage sites being put at risk such as the Danube Gate of Gyor (Winkler, 2014, pp. 76-7) , as local and less-prepared administrators are usually more prone to be pressured and influenced by lobbyists.
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Figure 4. Organigramme of the Hungarian system of heritage management
3.3. Museums
The Hungarian museums are empowered with a considerable scope of action. The first major step in that direction of development started in 1999 when county and city museums were transferred from the state to the local authorities (Pap & Palfi, 2010, p. 195). Even county museums are involved in designation of cultural heritage, site monitoring, post-excavation analysis, restoration and additional activities corresponding to the duties of the Budapest History Museum (Budapesti Történeti Múzeum) (Herein System, 2016, pp. 9-26). To the mid-2000s these activities were endangered by some problems. At first, as in lots of the cases of local governance in Central and Eastern Europe, there was unpreparedness for the new, additional tasks of the local administration. For example, county museums lacked archaeology professionals and other expert staff. Another serious problem, presented by Bozoki-Ernei, was the development-led excavations and the way construction investors contracted preventive excavations. The option of choosing selected heritage institutions and the price-setting arrangements led to the developmnent of price-war between local museums. The consequences were so serious that the Association of County Museums emerged as a voluntary organisation, that tried to set a nation-wide fixed price for excavation per square meter (Bozoki-Ernyey, 2007, pp. 115-7).
These rights and obligations of county museums and the Budapest Historical Museum were challenged by the existence of a behemoth state-run company – the Field Service for Cultural Heritage. One of the first effects of its creation was the setting of the unified fixed prices for developmnet-led excavations nation-wide (Bozoki-Ernyey, 2007, p. 119). Established in 2007, alongside its preventive archaelogical activities connected with large –scale public and private development, it was also the major actor in protection of built cultural heritage. As put by Viragos, the 300 staff additionally was also involved in post-excavation research, conservation, publication and dissemination, socialization of restored objects. Even though the organization received lots of international acclaim – with projects run in Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, India and Cambodia, as well as the Quality Prize for Architecture and the Europa Nostra Prize, it was dissolved. The 2 000 000 square meters excavations done in 2008 were mostly due to the construction of the Budapest – Pecs motorway (Viragos(Ed.), 2009, pp. 5-11). The end of that project, the effects of the world financial crisis on Hungary and the political changes in Hungary may have provided for this policy change.
The county museums are financed by the local government of the county capital as of 2013 that being previously a task of the county itself (Herein System, 2016, p. 64). That move could have had a postive effect in terms of sound expenditure of public funds. The county capitals are the seats of the museums and thus they are benefiting disproportionaly from its activities, and deducting fractions of the taxes of the smaller communes may lead to a conflictual situation. However, besides that obvous positive effects, there are negative externalities that could emerge. The local government of the county capital may be reluctant to finace projects of the museum that could greatly affect the rest of the county such as introduction of various cultural routs and other elements of the broader ecomuseum concept.
Another example of pressure is the relative and the monetary rule of preventive archaeology which is one of the main responsibilities of the county museums as the real estate developers are obliged to pay up to 1% of the budget of the project up to the maximum amount of circa 70 000 Euro as of 2014 (Herein System, 2016, p. 64). The ever-raising prices of such activities could demand more funding by the county museums. If the excavations and the site could affect positively the whole county, another coflictual situation would be created. That is further enhanced by the fact that as of 2002 the number of total planned excavations was almost three times smaller than the number of development-led excavations (Bozoki-Ernyey, 2007, pp. 112,115) At the end, archaeological finds are not well regulated legally as either state or local property (Pap & Palfi, 2010, p. 195), thus adding further uncertainty in curatorial activities and visitation planning of county museums.
3.4. Private sector, non-governmental public and private sector
Private and corporate museums and collections started emerging in the early 1990s (Adlercreutz, 1993, p. 20), although not legally regulated. The same process occured with the establishment of private archaeological companies (Bozoki-Ernyey, 2007, p. 116), however they are still operating as solely sub-contractors for museums as independent excavations are not allowed by the state. Further, infrastructure developers and their sub-contractors are not obliged to pay for scientific analysis of the finds, their socialisation or dissemination of further research. That constrains the career development of the experts hired by the real estate investors (Bartosiewisz & al., 2011, p. 305). Additional development of the private sector in cultural heritage is challenged as all finds are state propety, setting of private collections is not allowed as well as the trade and export of finds and artefacts (Knowledge and protection - Hungary, 2014, p. 8). The free enterprise involvement in architectural conservation and restoration is quite under-represented in Hungary as well (Herein System, 2016, pp. 64,68).
In respect to the heritage public, one of the best outcomes of the reforms in Hungary is the inclusion of museum volunteers in the system. In the period between 2008 and 2018 their number was steadily rising and is fluctuating around 10% of the total staff (EGMUS, 2020). However, as Bartosiewisz et al. point out, there is an increasing popular interest in ethnohistory. Although not massively affecting the whole sector, academic interpretations of archaeological finds that are based on controversial scientific and scholarly methods find their way to the public. Being primarily radically ethno-nationalistic in character, the image of such archaeologists „as a lonesome genius, defying an inbred and corrupt system” (Bartosiewisz & al., 2011, pp. 311-314) of the past Commusnit regime is creating a problematic basis for the popular interpretation of the national cultural heritage. The effect of the radically nationalistic and questionably scientific interpretations of the past may put the evolution of the muli-tiered framework of decision-making in danger, given that a major part of it could be considered anti-nationalistic in nature.
3.5. Right to excavate
In Hungary, the right to to conduct archaeological excavations is well regulated but rather strict. As Pap and Palfi reveal, according to the national legislation, archaeological activity is an exclusive right for the universities with departments in archaeology, the Archaeological Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the National Office of Cultural Heritage, National Cultural Heritage Protection Centre and museums with relation to archaeology. Further, the excavations are restricted to qualified archaeologists that are obliged to be employed by state institution or at least are contractors of one of the licensed institutions in the field (Pap & Palfi, 2010, p. 194). Such restrictions are excluding any international and European researchers which are not sub-contracted by Hungarian institution, limiting the scope of the “heritage community” to the national borders.
3.6. Impact of the Structural Funds of the European Union
The cultural heritage sector in Hungary is also benefiting from the Strucutural Funds of the European Union. As presented by Inkei, several major contributions in that regard could be pointed out. Although originally the setting of a single cultural Operational Program was being negotiated between Hungary, the European Commision and the Council of the European Union, it did not come into being at the end. However, the actions on the protection and preservation of cultural heritage were allotted most of the funding for culture. That was especially acute across the Regional Operational Programs which were established in Hungary. In Central Transdanubia for example 15.9% of the whole allocated budget was to be spent on public history and patrimony.
Although the national Social Infrastructure Operational Program and the Social Renewal Program benefited mostly construction and building renovations in the field of culture, museums exploited the funding in a more rational way and presented a substantial qualititave positive change. As Inkei argues, the museum experts in Hungary were well-integrated profesionally in the existing European networks and well-prepared both managerially and technically. That allowed them to get access to the financing and exploit the full potential of the EU funds. As their agenda has been mostly set on socialization and communication to the public, they accented primaraly on museum education and educational programs. The result was the establishement of cooperation links with schools, libraries, cultural centres and other organisations and additionally the creation of many museum programs. Further, the museums boosted their infrastructure potential and deployed the financial allocations to invest in displaying technologies and room for the socialization goals.
Consequently the report of Inkei reveals that the regionalization, based on each of the Regional Operational Programs and the New Hungary Development Program, has led to some forms of positive administrative innovation. The inclusion of local communes and settlements with less than 5000 inhabitants in the application to funding has led to restoration of local built heritage. In that process, the Hungarian central government put in place viable sustainable instruments, such as flexible pay and salaries packages for the additionally hired staff. The co-financing burden and the further economic pressure on local authorities and actors was thus considerably eased. In addition to the built rural heritge, landscape heritage saw increased attention as well. The European funds helped substantially the establishment and the development of open-air museums and the Environment and Energy Operational Program was used for the renovation of 5 historical parks (Inkei, 2012, pp. 8-14).
In conclusion, it could be argued that the impact of the European Union funding in Hungary provided for substantial gains for cultural heritage as it has empowered local cultural operators to strengthen their socialization and management techniques. Additionaly, heritage has been set high on the overall cultural agenda, as financing was primaraly set on it. Beside such positive outcomes however, digitaliztion as a form of massive popular inclusion was not efficiently sought and it benefited mostly the film sector, neglecting the museums and other cultural heritage institutions (Inkei, 2012, p. 23). Another negative impact of the European Union funding that could be pointed out was the closing of the Field Service in Hungary. Hugely reliant on the unsteady cycle of the development of the public road infrastructure, comparable to the case of Poland, its existence was considered no longer needed after the completion of the Budapest-Pecs highway.
3.7. Conclusions on Hungary
Summarizing the above given notions on Hungary, it could be stated that the process of decentralization and inclusion of private stakeholders in the heritage sector is more gradual than the one in Poland. At the beginning, the reforms provided for the enabling of the cultural operators such as museums and local actors that led to the development various socialization programs, innovative ways of self-funding and public support, especially through the mass enrolment of volunteers in the museum sector. The latter stage that occurred with the termination of the centralized expert bodies controlling the national heritage is still to be assessed in depth, given the lack of substantial data. In spite of that, even before that policy change, scholars such as Bartosiewisz et al. argued that in Hungary, the theoretical and academic development in the field of archaeology is lately more restricted by the free market than by the former „Soviet ideological cliches”. However, the state still has substantial supervisory role in comparison to the others across the sample.
Chapter 4. Romania
4.1. Historical perspective
Archaeology as a scholarly work became popularized in the principality of Wallachia, present-day Romania, in the beginning of the 19th century with the archaeological expeditions of the Russo-Flemish aristocrat Vladimir de Blaremberg who published his findings in the series “Archaeological memories”. At that time, the first popular notions of the anthropological destruction of cultural heritage sites as opposite to modern scholarly practices became to emerge (Bira, 2015, pp. 111-115). The initiative for the Natural History and Antiquities Museum belonged to the local boyar Mihalache Ghica who opened his artefact collections to the public at the Saint Sava College in 1834 (Badica, 2011, p. 717). The first heritage museum in present-day Romania was established relatively early for Eastern Europe - in 1864 as the National History Museum of Romania by the local aristocracy (Aronsson & Elgenius, 2011, p. 12).
Although the Communist regime in Romania was very active in its exploitation and rather extravagant interpretation of the national heritage as previously revealed in the dissertation, the actions on protection and conservation were not set high in the agenda priorities of the respective authorities. Urban architectural heritage was lost due to vast infrastructure projects, monasteries and churches were destroyed with overt intention (Apor, Mihaljević, & Petrescu, Collections of Intellectual Dissent: Historians and Sociologists in post-1968 Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia, 2018, pp. 378-379). In 1977 even the Directorate of Historic Buildings was dissolved by the Romanian government. Additionally, a legal act in 1974 stated that 7-8 000 out of 13 000 villages should be destroyed by the year 2000(Grivescu, 1989 as cited by (Larkham, 2013)). These policies of re-imaging development of Communist Romania undisputedly destroyed much of the country`s monumental heritage and further its traditions, oral culture, etc.
However, the biggest problem of cultural heritage policy and management was only partly a direct result of the Soviet-imposed Communist regime. As in other nation states of Central and Eastern Europe, the biggest challenge was the changes that followed the regime, aimed at democratization and free market society. Besides the major financial effect created by the economic difficulties, the rather eager attempts to destroy all of the previous legal setting in cultural heritage management, set the whole system in a state of a free fall. As Bors and Damian reveal, after 1990 substantial parts of the heritage protection regulations were outruled in Romania without establishing new ones. However, the central role of the Romanian Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs as a sole decision-maker in the field after the fall of the regime was challenged only by increased activism of the Council of Europe, as argued by Bors and Damian, and only after the beginning of the 2000s there were some coordinated attempts to set a system of control on excavation activities through new monitoring bodies (Bors & Damian, 2014, p. 14).
The decentralization of the Romanian heritage management, according to Balsan, was firstly initiated with the introduction of non-governmental organisations such as the Soros Open Society Network. Further, a major legal change occurred in 1997 when a Consultative Council at the top of structure of the Ministry of Culture included civil servants as well as non-governmental organisations and other cultural heritage stakeholders. Similar Regional Cultural Forums were set in 2001. However, the resistance of the professional, experts and academics in the field, as well as the established approaches themselves proved these initiatives ineffective and they served only as political publicity. These changes were coordinated by a special Public Policy department established in the Ministry of Culture with responsibilities of developing a sound institutional system and introducing procedural practices on various levels of the cultural heritage management system (Balsan, 2018).
4.2. System of authorities
After such developments in Romania, according to the HEREIN report on the Organisations of cultural patrimony, the main central body concerned with the sector is the National Heritage Institute, placed administratively directly under the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. It was created as a merger of three previous institutions that were in place for managing respectively archaeological activities; museum collections and artefacts; historical buildings and monuments. The National Heritage Institute is thus controlling the archaeology branch through keeping the inventory of finds, regulating museum collections and excavation sites. In respect to built monuments the Institute is involved in the designation procedures of heritage sites, the issuing of construction and intervention permits as well as in the monitoring of excavation sites. In these tasks, the National Heritage Institute is both supported and controlled by three expert bodies, appointed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage – the National Commission for Museums and Collections, the National Archaeological Commission and the National Commission for Historic Monuments. A similar structure is adopted on county level, where the heritage policy and management is set under the control and supervision of the County Directorates for Culture (HEREIN System, 2018).
The level of decentralization of the public authorities regulating the heritage sector in Romania was challenged by a set of factors. In the mid-2000s the county directorates of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage were overburdened and lacking well-qualified staff (Oberlander-Tarnoveanu, 2007, pp. 170-1). As revealed by Balsan, although in 2006 the Romanian government adopted strategies oriented towards decentralization, regionalization and digitalization, another significant problem was also the underdeveloped local cultural infrastructure. Thus, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development started a process of setting up cultural institutions in rural and small urban centres as well as improving the existing cultural infrastructure (Balsan, 2018).
Further, the Romanian protection standards in cultural heritage could be challenged by two main factors. At first, as presented by Oberlander-Tarnoveanu, in 2004 the preventive archaeological excavations started exceeding the number of the planned academic excavations, a process that is expected to last due to the construction boom in Romania. Additionally, since 1974, the costs of preventive excavations are being paid by the real estate and infrastructure investors. They are obliged to cover the price of the scientific analysis of the finds and even its dissemination across the academia and the wider public. However, the heritage administration as well as the police, the judicial system, etc. had substantial problems with the application of that rule (Oberlander-Tarnoveanu, 2007, pp. 168-9). Those developments led to the virtual cease of financing for regular excavations by the Romanian government in 2014 (Musteata S. , 2015, p. 17) with the last budget for archaeology and protection of cultural heritage being 134 300 Euro (Ganciu, 2018, p. 440).
Figure 5 . Organigramme of the Romanian cultural heritage governance system
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4.3. Right to excavate
The right to excavate archaeological sites in Romania is rather restricted. At first, the possibility of starting and leading excavations is closed to a limited circle of persons that need great professional experience and high formal requirements such as academic background and positions in research institutes (Bors & Damian, 2014, p. 74). Secondly, every permit for archaeological excavations has to be issued on central national level. The process used to be led by the two employees of the Archaeological Unit of the National Heritage Direction to the Ministry (Oberlander-Tarnoveanu, 2007, p. 170). However, that exclusion of various stakeholders and restriction of the access to the cultural heritage could be justified on some grounds.
At first, the problem of treasure-hunting and illicit trade of artefacts has been acute in Romania. Although the specialized programs and units of the central and local police were effective to combat such crimes, in 2009 the initiatives were dropped and abandoned by the authorities (Cojocaru as cited by (Musteata S. , 2014, p. 74)). Then, the level of inventorization of the cultural artefacts, as the National Archaelogical Record was introduced late – in 2000 (Oberlander-Tarnoveanu, 2007, p. 171), presupposed risks of either loss or illicit trafficking. At last, the metal detecting and the looting metal detecting provides for are not well-regulated as a whole. Metal detecting is not forbidden and finders of cultural heritage artefacts are rewarded up to the 45% of the price of the finds, a fact that further incentivize looting (Ganciu, 2018, pp. 437-452).
4.4. Stakeholder access and cultural tourism
The economic and financial problems in Romania provide for low levels of interest and willingness of inclusion coming from the citizens and the communities in the process of heritage preservation. The limited resources and the need of investment as well as the attention to other pressuring development issues is blocking the effectiveness of the decentralization process, as the county and local authorities are in charge of managing their monuments and artefacts (HEREIN System, 2018, p. 10). Such conclusions are presented also by Majaru in the cases of the endangered manors in the Banat region with her adding the problem of mass education on cultural heritage preservation (Majaru, 2014, p. 131). It is worth noticing that transposed to the national scale civil society is being increasingly involved, as presented by the case of the Rosia Montana historical gold mining site. In that situation the wider audience is backing heritage preservation and conservation of ancient practices and techniques, rather than the introduction of lucrative contemporary gold extraction (Nistor, 2014, p. 122).
The private sector involved in heritage management in Romania is rather restricted by the existing legislation and thus it is unable to develop in a steady pace. In the field of archaeology private companies are allowed only to provide surveys for development-led impact on probable finds and to consult investors in the field of construction on similar issues. However, the constant changes of archaeological laws and norms after the intoduction of the first ones in 2000-2001 (Bors & Damian, 2014, pp. 15-18), may provide them with substantial workload as legal and compliance consultants.
The practice of neglecting built architectural heritage is a burden for the development of the private sector as well. Additionally, the cadastre system of Romania started to evolve rather late in comparison to other European countries. The uncertainty posed by the lack of well described property, its borders or the borders of territorial-administrative units and the area of heritage sites (Government of Romania, United Nations Development Programme, 2008, p. 123) would put the private interest to a halt in the prompting economisation. As pointed out by a 2014 report, there is only one existing enterprise for conservation and restoration of protected buildings (Bors & Damian, 2014, p. p.44).
Besides the overall economic factors that influence the development of a sustainable and devolutioned heritage system in Romania, the underdeveloped cultural tourism is the most important single one. Although in the mid-2000s the cultural heritage tourism represented 13,2 % of the total sector, there were significant problems of not advanced or even non-existent touristic infrastructure, no or limited options for basic physical access, there were no or little amount of gas stations, parking spaces, hotels or restaurants (Constantin & Mitrut, 2009, p. 157). That should be taken into account when comparing Romania with the other cases of the analysed sample of countries, especially in the following assessment.
4.5. Impact of the EU Structural Funds
During the application of the financial framework between 2007 and 2013, the Structural Funds of the European Union have had rather restricted impact on the cultural heritage management in Romania. At first, in financial terms, as the Romanian culture policy was strongly affected by the economic crisis in 2009, the funds have played little role in easing the malfunding of the public authorities. Based on the European Expert Network on Culture and Audiovisual report of Suteu, several major conclusions could be made. At the beginning, initiatives led by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage introducing strategies and plans for reforms, in order to negotiate a single Operational Program on Culture in 2009, were futile as the political crisis that concurred the process, halted them. Further, the Structural Funds were subject to mismanagement and corruption at various levels.
However, in line with the Suteu report arguements, a major positive effect on the cultural heritage system was that the National Strategic Reference Framework that was the basis of the 2007-2013 negotiated funds, culture was „almost entirely assimilated to heritage” and in practice the allocations for culture in the Operational Programs were all dedicated to cultural heritage, mostly in respect to rehabilitation of touristic infrastructure. The above-mentioned problems of project management hindered that opportunity for the sector and in the period 2009-2010, the absorbtion rate of the funding was as low as 0,296%.
The devolution of the decision-making and management was not eased by the Structural Funds either. The Regional Operational Programs were adopted on a central basis and even strategical planning for expenditure was not allowed. Regional cultural operators in their majority were unable to access the funding mostly due to lack of technical training and managerial difficulties, such as monitoring and reporting interim results correctly. Some local authorities managed to adopt projects through the Regional Operational Program in the field of rehabilitation of protected buildings and promotion of heritage. A major opportunity for mass training of heritage professionals under the Sectoral Operational Program Human Resources Development was also missed due to the fact that the European Commission stopped the program as there were growing concerns of mismanagement.
A substantial positive development in the heritage management system in Romania was the fact that the non-governmental sector was included in the financial framework of the Operational Programs and such organisations were allowed to apply for funding. In many respects they were more efficient than the local authorities. Most of the non-governmental applicants sought restoration of monasteries and churches. The non-governmental sector was also leading in the most successful programs which turned out to be the Hungary-Romania Cross Border Cooperation Program and the Romania-Bulgaria Cross-Border Cooperation Program. The projects covered not only the protection and preservation of cultural heritage, but also its socialization in the cross-border context. Additionally, historical education and landscape heritage were included (Suteu, 2012).
In summary, the basic outcomes of the European Union support for the heritage sector in Romania between 2007 and 2013 could be estimated as rather limited. The most important one was the promulgation of the heritage craze that consumed the overall cultural policy. Additionally, cross-border cooperation, especially with Bulgaria and Hungary, has proved successful, a fact that fits well into the decentralization agenda. However, the cultural heritage program of the Romanian central and local authorities has led to questionable results. An example of that is the historically diverse region of Bukovina. A field survey executed by Burghelea and Visau in different Romanian regions presents the lack of popular knowledge of the Bukovina`s heritage assets. They point that the lack of governmental involvement is the main reason that not only international, but even national cultural tourism is not developed (Burghelea & Visau, 2011, p. 121). At the end, as in the other countries in the sample, digitalization was not adopted through the possibilities of Structural Funds support.
4.6. Conclusions on Romania
Even though the Romanian authorities accept the role of cultural heritage as a factor for social development since the beginning of the 2000s, the real actions in that direction have been rather limited. The economic and political crises have halted the process. The major step was taken with the National Sustainable Development Strategy of 2008. It introduced the aim of "reducing excessive regulation" and "decentralize the mechanism of technical approval" (Government of Romania, United Nations Development Programme, 2008, p. 127). However, due to the lack of reasonable amount of attention and technical capacity of the local authorities and especially the local citizens, such reforms may not have the desired outcomes as in the cases of Hungary and Poland. Although decentralization would have established a stronger link between decision-making and political scrutiny, without the improvement of public education, attention and action, it would not provide substantial changes in a positive direction.
Chapter 5. Bulgaria
5.1. Historical perspective
The concentrated heritage protection in Bulgaria started developing relatively late in comparison with the rest of the nation states across the sample. Even though Poland was not independent country in the 19th century, it could be speculated that the Russian Empire was providing more stimulating atmosphere in the face of the central government than the Ottoman Empire for Bulgaria. Even though at regional level the local cultural houses named “chitalishta” started collected various artefacts and documents and the national Archaeological association was established in 1879, the first archaeological museum was created in 1887 in Varna by the Czech brothers Karel and Hermann Shkorpil (Vukov, 2011, pp. 133-149). The first national heritage museum - National Archaeological Museum - was established in 1905 as a common effort by the Bulgarian Learned Society, the Ministry of Culture and Education and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Aronsson & Elgenius, 2011, p. 12).
During its socialist period, Bulgaria developed a strong domestic tourism industry in connection to heritage. Its purpose, besides purely commercial one, was the propagandation of the link between the Bulgarian past and the Communist establishment. The importance of that policy was the introduction of substantial conservation activities in two main directions. The first one was set towards sites and monuments that represented the „Bulgarian hegemony over the Balkans” before the Turkish conquest and the struggle against the latter afterwards. The second direction was concentrated on the Bulgarian churches and monasteries, as opposed to the rest of communist Europe (Newby, 1984 as cited by (Newby, 2013, pp. 222-4)). Although the official policy of the ruling party was having a strong atheist and secularist rooting, the threat of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation coming from neighbouring Turkey as well as from the Turkish and other Muslim minorities inside the country, allowed for the protection of the Bulgarian Orthodox heritage. Additionally, that form of Christianity was shared with the core of the USSR - Russia and the Russian culture, which played a crucial role in the establishment of those policies.
The political changes starting from 1989 coincided with a great economic downturn, which affected all government expenditure. Further, as argued by Koleva, especially in the period between 2000 and 2008 the heritage management system in Bulgaria was put on additional financial constraints. The political crisis led to a total lack of legislative initiatives, decreasing protection and socialization measures, and higher levels of corruption in the sector (Koleva, 2014, p. 66). The crucial legal step in Bulgaria was taken in 2009 when the 40-year-old rigid law on cultural heritage was changed and it finally provided for the creation of private museums and cultural monuments on concession (Andreeva, 2018).
5.2. Organisational structure
Based on the HEREIN report on Bulgaria, several basic point on its heritage management system could be presented. At the beginning, the Minister of Culture plays a solid role, granting statute of cultural heritage or the less protected one of „national wealth”, often after a formal proposal from a museum and upon advice by a body of experts (HEREIN System, 2018, p. 28). He or she is also empowered with permitting the establishment of private museums, allowing archaeological excavations as well as the creation of replicas and copies of cultural objects, giving permissions for export of artefacts and for Bulgarian heritage exhibitions abroad. After the ministry, the main government agency entrusted with legal responsibilities for cultural heritage is the National Institute for Immovable Cultural Heritage. It is in charge of the designation of cultural sites, with their monitoring on central level as well as spatial planning related to archaeology and cultural heritage (HEREIN System, 2018, pp. 1, 9). In respect to movable collections and finds, the National Centre for Museums had played an important role, however, after its autonomy was overtaken by the Ministry of Culture in 2006 (Andreeva, 2018) and its competencies are diminishing.
Further, the controlling role of the National Institute for Immovable Heritage is enacted by the Inspectorate for Conservation of Cultural Heritage (HEREIN System, 2018, p. 7). In comparison to the system of the other analysed states like Hungary, the number of staff is uniquely low to cover the whole country and thus state-wide actual control is posed to risk. Thus, some of the functions are being transferred to other state and local bodies. In respect to construction permits, that would be the Ministry with competencies over construction (Andreeva, 2018). However, such a policy would lead to discrimination of heritage. It is worth noticing that neither approach has achieved to stop the „uncontrolled construction” over the years after the fall of Communism in Nessebar which is protected in the highest possible level, being listed as a World Heritage site (Ziesemer, 2014, p. 57).
The next level of public governance of heritage is the municipal one. However, the municipalities are rarely running their own cultural heritage programs or develop local strategies, and instead they are proposing programs to the Ministry which is susbsidising them in the most common range of 50-80% (Andreeva, 2018). That arrangement of joint financing, rather than clear division of financial responsibility is not working properly. Local governments are generally not interested in culture and „due to permanent financial problems”, they often do not pay the contracted co-financing (Varbanova, 2012, p. 6), providing a great risk of the localism agenda.
Figure 6 . Bulgarian cultural heritage governance organigramme
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5.3. Museums
Besides municipalities, the museums in Bulgaria lack a sufficient role in the changing heritage policy as well. According to the HEREIN report, there are state, regional and municipal museums. Further, these are divided in archaeological and history ones, based on their thematic objectives. The most neglected in regard to policy initiative are the 29 regional and 90 municipal museums. Their scope of action is mostly to draft proposals for additional financing to the central government and to assist municipalities with programs for cultural heritage. The regional and municipal museums reflect the competencies of the respective local governments. The Regional Governors are only to coordinate activities on heritage protection and the municipal councils, mayors of municipalities, mayors of districts and mayoralties are to propose designations as protected heritage sites and objects to the Minister of Culture (HEREIN System, 2018, pp. 11, 14, 15).
In the case of the allocation of archaeological finds across museums, a major issue of the decentralization agenda as previously revealed, the local museums and thus the local communities are further neglected. According to the legal acts and norms, such finds are to be preserved by the closest state or municipal museum. However, the allocation of artefacts should correspond to the theme of the museum as well (HEREIN System, 2016, p. 28) and not a great many of local museums could be found appropriate on that basis. As the museological themes in Bulgaria are broad - not only historical, archaeological, but also based on ethnography and others, conflicts for such distribution may arise and these are going to be particularly acute with the localism agenda of the Council of Europe and the European Union.
5.4. Preventive excavations
The preventive excavations in Bulgaria are arranged legally to be conducted with complex coordination between the local authorities, the private sector and the central government. As revealed by the HEREIN report, when real estate or infrastructure construction activity encounters possibly valuable archaeological finds, the investor is to contact the director of the local archaeological museum, the director of the local history museum, the local mayor and the regional director for protection of cultural heritage. Then, the mayor and the regional director provide guidance for temporary conservation, and the latter also sends report to the Minister of Culture. At last, the minister appoints a committee that consults him or her on the final decision for further actions (HEREIN System, 2018, p. 28).
Additionally, practices of preventive excavations that collide with the world-wide understandings of archaeology are existing in Bulgaria. An example of that is the exclusion of cultural heritage professionals in such works. Even very complicated activities such as the unearthing of graves and human remains are done by common workers without any qualifications (Gaydarska, 2010, p. 76). As the tendency across Europe is archaeological excavations to be mostly development-led, such practices are even more endangering.
5.5. Right to excavate
The right to excavate archaeological sites in Bulgaria could be understood as rather liberally given in comparison to other states. Gaydarska presents some of the most crucial threats posed by that open system. At first, even in cases when archaeologists do not submit reports and documentations of the finds to the competent authorities, they may continue working on other sites. The legal changes aimed to tackle the issue still provide loopholes. Additionally, the Bulgarian archaeological community is accustomed to the controversial involvement of mostly local workers and, occasionally, of school-children in the unearthing process. In specific projects where typically the work of the archaeologists is expected to be supported by other specialists, for example - in the cases of human remains - by anthropologists, there are no legislative provisions requiring such an involvement. In practice, archaeologists do not seeks support of other specialists as well (Gaydarska, 2010, p. 76).
All of these loopholes pose, at the beginning, a major risk to the professionalism required by the body of researchers, scientists and scholars. The lack of the requirement to report finds is of special importance due to the fact that there is a considerable problem of treasure hunting, illegal trade and collections in Bulgaria. Even though the involvement of local workers and schoolchildren may have a positive outcome to the socialization and communication of the cultural heritage to the hosting communities, the scarcity of professional training poses major risks to the preservation and protection of finds. Additionally, such loosely controlled access of non-professionals to the archaeological sites brings again the problem of treasure hunting. However, the overall liberal approach is allowing the involvement of researchers from abroad more easily in comparison with Hungary. That could provide more academic output in Bulgaria and additionally much-needed funding to some of the heritage sites.
5.6. Inventories, illicit trading and digitalization
The lack of involvement on behalf of the Bulgarian academia and society in the application of the new concepts of heritage policy and management is also spreading to the fields of artefact inventories, their digitalization and to the illicit trade of archaeological finds. Based on the HEREIN reports the following conclusions could be made in that regard. At first, the national „inventory book” of cultural artefacts is not maintained by a single authority, but rather spread between the Bulgarian Academy of Science, the National Museum of History and the National Inspectorate on Immovable Cultural Heritage. The functioning of the inventory itself is malfunded, its unification and creation as a single tool occurred rather late. The process of mass digitalization and the easing of access are stalled, having no set rules or development agenda (Vasileva & Petrova, 2019, pp. 34-39). The same problems are affecting the National Register of the Immovable Cultural properties and Declared Immovable Sites. Not only Geographic Information System is not set for the built heritage, but also the website of the register is under construction.
The under-development of the inventories and the register of cultural heritage artefacts is closely connected to their illicit trade. Its relevance is sensed by the lot of the various police, prosecutor and other law enforcement departments established, as revealed by the HEREIN report. The rather relaxed regulations on archaeologist and heritage specialist dealing with artefacts, as well as the inclusion of various workers in excavations was pointed as a major flaw in the system of illicit trade protection. Unintentional finds legislation is also providing major risks. Finders, according to the law, are not only to be renumerated for the objects turned in to the heritage institutions, but also on other various grounds, such as on their preservation efforts up until the submission of the finds. These all put great organisational and financial pressure on heritage institutions.
Additionally, illicit trade of cultural finds and artefacts is not subject to criminal accusations by the Bulgarian authorities. With Bulgaria being the third largest source of illicit trade in Europe (Moore, 2007 as cited by (Campbell, 2013, p. 123)), employing over 30.000 looters without counting the other participants in the whole network of illicit excavation, trade, etc. (Moore, 2007 and Dimitrov, 2011 as cited by (Campbell, 2013, p. 125)), the laws provide only fines for illicit trade within the country. Only international trade is subject to the Penal Code and could lead to imprisonment (HEREIN System, 2016, pp. 1-4, 29-32). At the end, it should be noticed that still the Cultural Heritage Act is not amended in line with the Annex to Regulation N3911/1992 of the European Union, that provides for the return of smuggled and illegally traded finds and artefacts between Member States (ICOM, 2015). The accounts that even Georgi Getov, the former head of the National Police’s Cultural Property Department, collaborated with an antiquities smuggling ring that included police, prosecutors, and museums (Shentov, 2010 as cited by (Campbell, 2013, p. 123)), make the situation with illicit trade of cultural heritage in Bulgaria quite problematic.
5.7. Private and non-governmental sectors
The role of the private sector in the Bulgarian heritage management system is set on a rather contradicting base. The sole existence of a big state company, run by the Ministry of Culture, provides for a considerable barrier to new private entrants. The Restavratsia EAD (Restoration EAD) has responsibilities for conservation and restoration of archaeological and architectural heritage and has 5 branches across the country (HEREIN System, 2018, p. 11) (Restavratsia EAD, 2020). The need for public procurements is also not clear, however, the Bulgarian HEREIN report notes the substantial recent involvement of the private sector due to public procurement procedures launched even from Restavratsia EAD. Most of the listed firms state the controversial and socially sensitive issue of reconstruction as an activity (HEREIN System, 2018, p. 15).
Another major involvement of the private sector is present in the legally questionable existence of individual artefacts collections and exhibitions. As presented by Dimitrova and Steunenberg, due to promuglated stricter European Union regulations on export of cultural artefacts, private owners were made „holders”. That issue was of such relevence to the heritage sector, that it met the opposition of specialists and the National Ombudsman brought the issue to the Constitutional Court (Dimitrova & Steunenberg, 2011, p. 20).
The role of civil society in the heritage management is traditionally limited. As pointed out by Varbanova, the communication between non-governmental organisations and the government is not well institutionalized (Varbanova, 2012, p. 6), presenting the virtual lack of such a need. The decades-long destruction of the site of the Roman provincial capital Colonia Ulpia Traiana Ratiaria by treasure hunters is a stark example of the lack of public awareness (ICOMOS Bulgaria, 2014, pp. 53-56).
The inclusion of the non-governmental sector in the heritage policy and management in Bulgaria is prone to additional problems as well. As pointed out by Dimitrova and Steunenberg, non-governmental organisations could be an instrument for private lobbying. The example of that are the 2009 discussions on the new law on cultural heritage. Most of the organisations at that time were positioned against stricter rules on the proof of origin of artefacts as a basis for ownership. That protected the unclear origin of the collections of former Communist apparatchiks and present oligarchs (Dimitrova & Steunenberg, 2011, pp. 22-3).
5.8. The impact of the EU Structural Funds
As Bulgaria failed to join the European Union in 2004 due to political and institutional underdevelopment, the Structural Funds opened fully after the accession in 2007. That year coincided with the financial framework of 2007-2013. Based on the European Expert Network on Culture and Audiovisual Report by Gaydarska, several levels of impact of that kind of financial support could be pointed. At the beginning, Bulgaria managed to negotiate direct culture allocations only from the European Regional Development Fund in the amount of 2%, around 10% less than the EU national average of 2.2%. Out of these allocations, more than half, as in most European Member States, were to be spent for „protection and preservation of cultural heritage.”
Setting aside the comparative amounts of funding, Gaydarska reveals that the Bulgarian government failed to manage them properly. Two major examples could be pointed out. At first, there was not a single Operational Program on Culture under the Structural Funds established. One of the main providers of funding to cultural heritage management was the Regional Development Fund. The amount for heritage was managed only at the central level and the Ministry of Culture was the most benefited entity. Of course, that was at the expense of other cultural operators and stakeholders. The second major problem was that the projects adopted were mostly centred on „reconstruction, repairing and modernization of buildings and interior” (Gaydarska, 2010, pp. 7-34).
Reconstruction as a practice is also steadily spreading in Bulgaria to a great extent and the institutions are accepting it as a success in raising the number of tourists (ICOMOS, 2014, pp. 55-57). The lack of sufficient control on such kind of spending from the European Union may put the legitimacy of its policy in cultural heritage in danger. Further, in Bulgaria, the regional cultural operators were the most neglected by the positive outcomes and possible empowerment of the funding. At last, as in all the other countries in the sample, the digitalization agenda was not set high in the priorities of the Operational Programs that dealt with the Structural Funds of the European Union.
5.9. Conclusions on Bulgaria
In conclusion, Bulgaria represents the most centralized and closed system of heritage management across the presented national examples. The Ministry of Culture is still holding powers that were transformed into trivial questions for regional and local actors elsewhere. However, the problem of inclusion of other stakeholders such as local bureaus, authorities, civil society and the private sector, should take into account that serious mismanagement accounts exist on local levels as well. Communities lack sufficient awareness to the issues of heritage management and non-governmental organisations are prone to pressure by private interests. Even though legal reforms towards their inclusion were initiated, the positive results to be encountered are scarce.
Part III. National level assessment and comparative analysis of policy impact
Chapter 1. Historical assessment
During the Soviet domination, the sample of the countries has experienced, as presented, some differences in relevance to the heritage sector. It could be argued that the most favourable positions were those of Bulgaria and Poland. Sharing some of the cultural traits of the prevailing Russian element of the Soviet Union, heritage governance was well financed and was subject to popular support. In Bulgaria, although the technical practices were questionable to the contemporary standards, they provided for the expansion of the group of the experts and additionally for the creation of a vital cultural tourism tradition. However, such policies, especially the opposition to minority groups in Bulgaria, may have further challenged the stability of stakeholder inclusion.
It should be as well noted that the process of developing the academic and policy agandas towards cultural heritage in the times of the Communist regimes was not so different from the same in Western Europe. The Conventions of the Council of Europe were following the increasing threats to heritage across the territories of its members. That conclusion could be extrapolated to other fields, such as contested heritage. Contradictions could be characterizing each and every heritage system as heritage is expanding its scope with time. So, in historical perspective, the Socialist experience was not the defining point for Central and Eastern European patrimony administration. Rather, it was the „shock therapy” afterwards, that contrasted the steady evolution of the sector in Western Europe
Given the academic and data constrains on the assessment of the sample of states of Central and Eastern Europe, cultural tourism and museum visitations would be adopted as main indicators for policy and administration success of given systems. As previously stated, UIS statistics on the cultural employment, Eurostat data on night spent on tourism and museum visits will be taken into account as well as various museum data from the European Group on Museum statistics, including visits. The analysis of the case comparison outcomes will also regard some qualititative remarks on the digitalization and other protective measures in the four states. At the end, data on the legislative and financial impact of the European Union and the Council of Europe will be revised in order to check the validity of the previous findings.
Chapter 2. Cultural employment
The limited data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics further provides data for only three of the sampled nation states – Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria as well as data for limited years. However, the statistics provides for further illustration of the heritage administration as part of the overall culture sector.
The cultural sector as a whole is the biggest in Hungary, providing stable growth in its employment, with that of Bulgaria being in similar levels and that of Romania being times smaller as part of the overall employment, but growing with the strongest pace (s. Table 1.) . The number of persons working with intangible cultural heritage is presenting a different picture. Romania possesses the biggest and the fastest growing sector for professionals in that field, while that of Hungary is declining to levels similar to those of Bulgaria (s. Table 2.) .
Table 1 . Percentage of persons working in the cultural sector
Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten
Source: retrieved from UIS http://data.uis.unesco.org/#
Table 2 . Number of persons working with intangible cultural heritage
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Source: retrieved from UIS http://data.uis.unesco.org/#
Chapter 3. Funding of culture and cultural heritage
Even though the scope of the study is limited outside the general macroeconomic performance of the selected sample of countries and their general public expenditure, a few notions could be made on their cultural spending as part of them. Poland and Bulgaria present similar starting bases and end results for the per capita public expenditure for culture in the period 2000-2015, however, Poland manages to achieve those similar results with less weight on its national budget and as part of the GDP. With a model similar to the Polish, Romania surpasses the cultural public spending for Bulgaria in 2010, but mostly due to the economic crisis of the late 2000s, it experiences a severe drop. Hungary outperforms in times the public expenditure in culture with similar levels of the national budget fraction for culture (s.Table 3.) (Compendium of Cultural Policies and Trends in Europe, 2021).
Table 3 . Public expenditure in the sampled countires
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Source: retrieved from Compedium on cultural policies and trends/ Monitoring public cultural expenditure in selected European countries (2000-2015) https://www.culturalpolicies.net/statistics-comparisons/statistics/funding/#1563453131381-77d52055-b082
In terms of cultural heritage, the data of the on the public expenditure in the sampled countries for museums and archives as part of the general public expenditure on culture could be taken into account. Poland presents a substantial part of the national budget for museums and archives with a slight rise before the economic crisis of the late 2000s with Hungary showing the same trend, but with less relative budgetary allocations. The statistics for Romania is not sufficient in order to lead to viable conclusions and that of Bulgaria is revealing a steady decline with rapidly rising overall cultural spending to roughly one tenth of that of the sample (s.Table 4.) (Compendium of Cultural Policies and Trends in Europe, 2021).
Table 4 . Public expenditure in the sampled countires for museums and archives as part of the general public expenditure on culture
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Source: retrieved from Compedium on cultural policies and trends/ Share of spending on culture by sector https://www.culturalpolicies.net/statistics-comparisons/statistics/funding/#1563453131381-77d52055-b082
Chapter 4. Cultural and heritage tourism
The assessment of the touristic activity, especially the one originating from other parts of Europe and the world, could be done on several grounds. At first, it represents the overall success of the agenda of the European Union in the economisation of the sector as well as in the additional policy for creating a common market in the cultural and historical heritage sector. Then, tourist activity could provide a basis for the estimation of the positive impact by the European Union on the sample of countries, including the free movement of people and capital next to financing and policy creation.
Taking into account data from Eurostat, two main criteria for the touristic analysis could be deployed. The first would be the nights spent at touristic accommodations with tourists originating from Europe as a region. That criteria would present the internal positive opportunities of the European Union policies including the notion for creating a common market in the sector as well as the already presented idea for creating a common European identity which would basically mean that the European citizens would be more interested in the culture of the four countries and thus visit their heritage more. Setting aside possible externalities such as the economic and financial crisis starting from 2007-2008, all the sampled countires presented a rise in terms of internal EU tourism. For the period 2013-2018, Bulgaria increased its nights spent at touristic venues with almost 42%, Hungary with around 33%, Romania and Poland with roughly 45% and 40% respectively (s. Table.5). The weight of the tourist statistics could be measured on the basis of per capita for each country, which would present circa 3,15 nights in Bulgaria, 2,83, 1,36, 2,18 for Hungary, Romania and Poland respectively.
Table 5 . Number of nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments intra-EU, in thousands
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Source: retrieved from Eurostat/ Number of nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments https://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=tour_occ_ninat&lang=en
As the above numbers represent the internal national tourism and the touristic incoming from other new European Union Member States, a stark example for the establishment of a common European cultural heritage identity and market, would be the touristic inflow form the original six Member States. For the simplicity of the analysis, only data from the three biggest states would be taken, namely, the data for the number of nights spent at touristic establishments on behalf of visitors originating from Germany, France and Italy (s .Tables 6, 7, 8).
Table 6 . Number of nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments, Germany, in thousands
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Source: retrieved from Eurostat/ Number of nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments https://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=tour_occ_ninat&lang=en
Table 7 . Number of nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments, France
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Source: retrieved from Eurostat/ Number of nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments https://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=tour_occ_ninat&lang=en
Table 8 . Number of nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments, Italy
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Source: retrieved from Eurostat/ Number of nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments https://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=tour_occ_ninat&lang=en
As presented by the data above, several conclusions could be made. Firstly, that Bulgaria has had a major increase of visitors from the three states taken into account, with the German tourists representing stably around 15% of the total nights spent. As previously presented by the dissertation, the relatively bigger reliance and development of tourism in Bulgaria has had its origins during the Cold War and it is primarily based around the coastal area. However, that steady rise of touristic influx, presents a strong argument for opportunities in the development of the heritage tourism from Old Europe.
Over the timeframe presented, the smallest increase is registered for Hungary. However, Hungary is still having first place from the four in terms of Italian visitors and second for French in absolute numbers of nights spent. It should be further added that the country possesses a key geographical position which argues for long-term stability of the nights spent and, combined with the stable numbers, argues for a sustainable model for development of cultural heritage tourism.
The two states left from the sample – Romania and Poland present a slightly different picture. Romania has the lowest absolute number of nights spent at places for accommodation from each of the states, except for the ones originating from Italy, where it has higher numbers than Bulgaria. However, the higher number could be explained also by the substantial Romanian diaspora in Italy. Poland, having the absolute highest number of nights spent by visitors originating from Old Europe, present less reliance on them in relative terms. An example for that is the inflow from Germany, which even though is a direct neighbour of Poland, provides for only 7% of the total touristic inflow.
Additional level of estimation of cultural heritage policy opportunities could be based on the number of establishments, accommodation places, bedrooms and bedplaces for the period between 2005 and 2014. In Poland and Romania they have increased with around 50%, in Hungary with around one third, whereas in Bulgaria they more than doubled. The actual rise of the number of bedplaces for the same time scope was roughly corresponding to the increase of the number of establishments in Hungary, in Bulgaria and Poland it was around 50% and 20% respectively, whereas in Romania it was less than 10%. Thus, it could be concluded that the development of accommodation infrastructure in Poland and especially in Romania was concentrated around small and medium-sized establishments. That would allow greater sustainability in terms of tourism and possibly greater regional and local development perspectives. Thus the policy of the Romanian government on providing decentralisation in the field of cultural heritage may be considered relatively successful.
Further, Eurostat reveals a substantial division in two groupings, on the one side, these would be Bulgaria and Hungary, and, on the other side, Poland and Romania. As evidenced previously in the analysis, the first group is more dependable on international tourism. Additionally, Hungary and Bulgaria surpass the 5% treshold in terms of overall employment in the accommodation and foodservice industry from the total workforce . That would suggest a more aggressive approach to cultural heritage as a mean to be exploited by the touristic branch and could describe and legitimise some level of political interference and attempts to centrally control the national patrimony due to the greater social importance.
Chapter 5. Museums activity and visits
Besides the overarching tourism activity, visits on museums, monuments and sites may present the most effective estimation tool of cultural heritage policies and administration. However, precise data is often scarce and even non-existent, as in the case of Romania. Collection is thus often made through case studies of selected museums and monumental sites, however, such a transposition to national level could not be sufficiently applied, providing viable conclusions.
One of the most corresponding pieces of data is based on the frequency of visits to cultural activities for the people aged 16 and above from the 2006 and 2015 issues of the Cultural statistics Pocketbook of Eurostat. For the two years taken into account - 2006 and 2015, the total percentage of the Bulgarian population attending such activities changed from 24.3 to 28.6%, considerably lower than the respective EU average for 2015 – 62.6%. For Romania, which has provided information, the number is even lower – at 27.4%. Poland and Hungary are with almost double the attendance at cultural activities than those in Bulgaria and Romania, with respectively 49% and 51.7% for 2006 and 53.7% and 50% for 2015. In Poland, roughly 40% of the strata have visited at least once a cultural site. Only in Hungary, the tendency is barely reaching the EU average with increased number of citizens which have made more than one visit. For 2015, when Romania was included in the Pocketbook in terms of frequency of visits, the numbers are slightly higher than those in Bulgaria, reaching almost 20%. Further broken down for people aged between 25 and 34 years which have made one visit for 2006, the data reveal that in the same order of countries the numbers are 12%, 31% and 42%. In Bulgaria, the same extract presents only 1% for people with lower education .
These huge divergencies based on various social and arguably economic groups, especially in the Bulgarian example, could present a great need of introducing inclusion and communication to the public. One possible root of that problem would be the fact, that heritage, as being part of culture, is requiring disposable income. In 2005 the cultural expenditure in relation to the overall household spending in both Hungary and Poland was reaching the average indicators of the European Union, whereas those in Bulgaria and Romania were the lowest. The other explanation is, as later revealed by the EGMUS (European Group on Museum Statistics) database, the better deployment of admission-free programs and initiatives at museums in Poland and Hungary. It is worth noticing, that both arguements are not directly connected to the decentalization and inclusion of stake holders agenda, as centalized approach could easily be applied for the same intended outcomes.
Chapter 6. EGMUS
Additional conclusions on cultural heritage policy and administration success on national level could be drawn from the EGMUS (European Group on Museum Statistics) database. It is worth taking into account that some of the statistics are presented for all types of museums rather than for only those connected with heritage. However, the latter are closely corresponding to the overall number, a link that is especially valid for Bulgaria. As heritage museums could be described not only historical and archaeological themed ones, but also such presenting ethnographical, biographical and other exhibitions. At last, as already done in the analysis so far, the estimation of data would not be based on absolute numbers, nation state size, but as much as possible on relative and easily comparable criteria.
At the beginning, in Poland, the available statistics are for the following years – 2003, 2005, 2009-2011 and 2014-2017. One of the most important developments in that particular time span is connected with the private museums. Introduced rather early in comparison to the other states across the sample, their activity could be used as a measurement of the productivity of a decentralized system. In the 2005-2017 period their number almost doubled from 113 to 196, which argues for their success. The decrease of their number after the financial crisis of the late 2000s for two consecutive years – 2010 and 2011 and the substantial increase in the number of other public museums could actually mean that the private owners have changed the legal entity type or were rescued by the state and local authorities in such a way (s. Table 9.). The uninterrupted rise of the number of both private and local museums argues for a rather peaceful coexistence of the two types. Further conclusions could be made by the analysis of the number of visits and the respective income.
Table 9 . Number of museums breakdown per ownership type in Poland
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Source: retrieved from EGMUS/ Country statistics https://www.egmus.eu/nc/en/statistics/complete_data/
The increase of the total visits if the museums with more than 100% in the period of 2003-2017 and the substantial and constant number of free admissions undisputedly further argues for the viability of both types of museums (s. Table 10.). However, Poland fails to introduce a meaningful number of foreign visitors, accounting for only 7% of the total in 2016 (EGMUS(European Group on Museum Statistics), 2020). That fact could argue for the sustainability of the model as it could make it independent from a fluctuating outside tourist inflow, but fails to present the cultural heritage of Poland as gaining more shared European notion.
Table 10 . Museum admissions, Poland
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Source: retrieved from EGMUS/ Country statistics https://www.egmus.eu/nc/en/statistics/complete_data/
The analysis of the data in terms of the financing in Poland is rather unstable with wide fluctuations of the public expenditure in both regular subsidies as well as in terms of investments. A possible explanation for fluctuations is the huge reliance of the Polish museums to financing spamming from the European funding, which requires on its side, co-financing payments on behalf of the Polish state (s. Table 11.).
Table 11 . Public expenditure for museums in Poland in EUR
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Source: retrieved from EGMUS/ Country statistics https://www.egmus.eu/nc/en/statistics/complete_data/
However, in terms of staffing of the museums, Poland does not perform as, later revealed, Hungary. The number of specialised staff is not consisting a majority of the staff and the institution of volunteering is additionally not as widespread and as qualified as the one in Hungary (s. Table 12.).
Table 12 . Museum staff in Poland
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Source: retrieved from EGMUS/ Country statistics https://www.egmus.eu/nc/en/statistics/complete_data/
That may be one of the facts that leads to Poland being at the end of the sample in terms of curatorial activity and scholarly activity throughout the sample. That is especially valid in the terms of the number of museums with at least one publication on electronic data carrier and the production of joint temporary exhibitions, with the number of publishing museums overall decreasing (s. Tables 13. and 14.).
Table 13 . Number of museums, Poland
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Source: retrieved from EGMUS/ Country statistics https://www.egmus.eu/nc/en/statistics/complete_data/
Table 14 . Temporary exhibitions, Poland
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Source: retrieved from EGMUS/ Country statistics https://www.egmus.eu/nc/en/statistics/complete_data/
For Hungary, the statistical data presented by EGMUS is for 2002, 2008, 2012-2017. At first, the data reveals the volatility of the cultural heritage sector in terms of museum ownership (s. Table 15.). Those changes confirm the uncertainty in Hungary in terms of heritage superintendence already revealed in Part II. However, even though unsteady process, the museums have a clear trend towards decentralization of its ownership and governance.
Table 15 . Number of museums breakdown per ownership type in Hungary
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Source: retrieved from EGMUS/ Country statistics https://www.egmus.eu/nc/en/statistics/complete_data/
Even though the decentralization of museums in Hungary is quite developed, the state subsidies play a major role and have additionally increased its relative part of the total income of museums from 54.4% in 2008 to 72% in 2017. However, in absolute terms the state subsidies were impacted a lot by the financial crisis of the late 2000s and have reached its pre-crisis level only in 2016. The same could not apply to the income form entry fees not being able to reach 75% of its pre-crisis level, with almost losing half of its share of the total museums income (s. Table 16.).
Table 16 . Total income and breakdown for Hungarian museums in EUR
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Source: retrieved from EGMUS/ Country statistics https://www.egmus.eu/nc/en/statistics/complete_data/
The importance of the state subsidies for the museums could be seen in the breakdown of the total admissions in Hungary (s. Table 17.). The admission free programmes provide for considerable part of the total museum visits and their decreased scope from 4.416.600 in 2008 to 3.187.590 provided for most of the overall drop in the late 2000s. The socialization effort of museums in Hungary was preserved not only by the state subsidies, but also from the steady growth of foreign tourist.
Table 17 . Total admissions and breakdown for Hungarian museums
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Source: retrieved from EGMUS/ Country statistics https://www.egmus.eu/nc/en/statistics/complete_data/
Even though the period after 2008 was characterized by financial constraints for the museums in Hungary, there are numerable positive effects in terms of their staffing with personnel, occurrence which could be attributed to the greater effort for finding effectiveness in terms of crisis management (s. Table 18.). With the exception of the period 2015-2016 most of the museum personnel employed was specialised, a continuous process which coincided with the financial crisis of the late 2000s. Additionally, a growing number of volunteers were attached to the museums, which provides for more financial and socialization sustainability. More importantly, a sizeable part of those volunteers were specialists. However, the fluctuations in employment as well as those in publications could be contributed to the emergency archaeological excavations and their cyclicity due to the investments financed by the European Union.
Table 18 . Total staff and breakdown for Hungarian museums
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Source: retrieved from EGMUS/ Country statistics https://www.egmus.eu/nc/en/statistics/complete_data/
In that period, the number of educational programs and socializing activities of museums experienced a mass and swift increase. These could be attributed to the positive outcomes of the Structural Funds management. Further, the number of specialized museums rose, which could be another result from such funding aimed at the creation of sub-museum types in rural regions such as houses connected with historically relevant personalities and events. However, the digitalization seems to be slowly introduced with low levels of internet penetration of museums and introductions of digital inventories of collections (s. Table 19.).
Table 19 . Socialization and digitalization data for Hungarian museums
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Source: retrieved from EGMUS/ Country statistics https://www.egmus.eu/nc/en/statistics/complete_data/
As already mentioned, the statistical data on heritage as well as culture in Romania is underdeveloped when compared with the other states of the sample. Thus the EGMUS database provides limited and inconsistent accounts for the years 2005-2007 and more detailed for 2013-2018. As a comparable indicator could be pointed the very low number of foreign visitors in the Romanian museums. In the period between 2005 and 2006 their part of the overall visits was less than 9% (EGMUS(European Group on Museum Statistics), 2020). Comparing the relative number with the one of Hungary, it could be argued that the low influx of foreigners provides greater sustainability and lessen eventual crises of financing via admissions. One of the reasons for that would be the presented problems with cultural infrastructure and thus tourism. The free admissions, even though presenting a large proportion of the total visits, do not correlate with the enourmous increase of visits in the middle and end of the 2010s with around 70% from its base. The rising number of internal visits as well as the growing number of private museums could lead to the conclusion that Romania is experiencing a strong popular interest into cultural heritage which is not hindered by the governance problems (s. Table 20.).
Table 20 . Number of museums and visitors per year in Romania
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Source: retrieved from EGMUS/ Country statistics https://www.egmus.eu/nc/en/statistics/complete_data/
Further, as Balsan reveals, only in two years, from 2008 to 2010 the total employment in museums and public art galleries dropped from 7854 to 7094 persons. However, that trend was even stronger for the whole sector of the cultural field without publishing – from 36 771 in 2008 to 26 851 employees in 2010(National Statistics Institute as cited by (Balsan, 2018)), a drop that was characterized by a reduction of 25% of the salaries of cultural workers in the public sector (Balsan, 2018). 100 out of 748 museums in the period 2000-2007 reported numbers of employment close to all the museums in the period 2013-2018. For the latter interval, a stark tendency is the increase of staff with the number of experts lagging (s. Table 21.). However, the curatorial activity, measured by the number of temporary exhibitions, is spread evenly by own and shared exhibitions.
Table 21 . Staff and curatorial activity data for Romanian museums
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Source: retrieved from EGMUS/ Country statistics https://www.egmus.eu/nc/en/statistics/complete_data/
The EGMUS statistical data on Bulgaria includes the period of 2005 and 2007-2017. In that case, heritage institutions correspond to the most with the statistics, as most museums are arranged on such themes. Similar to Hungary, the years that correspond to the global financial crisis represent both a significant change of pre- and post-crisis foreign visitors and a drop in free-admission programs. As presented on Table 22., it is clear that the total amount of museums visits decreased and were dependent on two major factors: foreign visitors and free admission programmes of museums. The drop of the former was continuous for the whole revised period post-2008 from 1.136.633 in 2008 to 737.642 in 2015, recovering to 1.112.496 in 2017. Combined with the decrease of the free admissions from 37% in 2008 to 16% in 2014, the outreach of museums substantially dropped.
Table 22 . Number of museum visits in Bulgaria
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Source: retrieved from EGMUS/ Country statistics https://www.egmus.eu/nc/en/statistics/complete_data/
It could be easily established that the drop of free entry programmes, even though it led to drop of visits, provided needed income for museums due to the decrease of state subsidies spammed from the financial crisis of the late 2000s. The period was followed by recovery of state subsidies for museums which almost doubled in terms of absolute numbers in the period 2011-2017 from 13.193.914 to 24.247.763 Euro (s. Table 23.). The chunks of the budget not covered by both entry fees and state subsidies spanning from 8.6% in 2005 to 17.1% in 2011 means that the museums used other sources of income. That was particularly covered by funding from the European Union, with the cyclicity of those sources coinciding with the cyclicity of the programming periods of the funding.
Table 23 . Income of museums in Bulgaria in EUR
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Source: retrieved from EGMUS/ Country statistics https://www.egmus.eu/nc/en/statistics/complete_data/
Although the Bulgarian museums are the least self-managed and decentralized, the curatorial activity is steadily increasing during the revised period. That is especially valid in the case of temporary exhibitions that besides their own resources used such from other museums and almost doubled cooperation on these grounds. Another positive outcome for the period as a whole, dismissing some lay-offs during the economic crisis of the late 2000s, was the increase of staff of museums from 2531 persons in 2005 to 3.224 in 2017 and especially the specialised staff from 1.589 to 1.874 respectively (s. Table 24.).
Table 24 . Curatorial activity in Bulgarian museums
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Source: retrieved from EGMUS/ Country statistics https://www.egmus.eu/nc/en/statistics/complete_data/
Further, the number of additional socialization activities increased substantially in the Bulgarian museums, as revealed by Table 25. It should further be taken into account that the number of the museums in Bulgaria decreased in a great proportion, which makes the conclusion even more acute. It should be additionally noted that the special educational programmes for ethnic minorities, even though increasing, do not increase with the same pace as the ones for children or for senior citizens. That is particularly important due to the fact that Bulgaria is one of the most ethnically diverse state across the sample.
Table 25 . Number of museums with museum education programmes, Bulgaria
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Source: retrieved from EGMUS/ Country statistics https://www.egmus.eu/nc/en/statistics/complete_data/
Based on the statistic and other data on cultural tourism and museums visits, limited conclusions could be drawn. At first, no clear-cut connection could be established, at least within the time scope restrictions, between decentralisation and inclusion of private stake holders and economic outcomes for the heritage sector. Although Poland presents the most effective and experienced reform agenda and is providing considerable results, the least changed Bulgarian system is also successful on that level. Similar notion could be set on the basis of museum empowerment. The contrasting cases of Bulgaria and Hungary both represent increased curatorial activity. The significance of the financial crisis as revealed by the statistics is undisputedly greater than the influence of the legal developments, thus open borders, macroeconomic growth and disposable income are more relevant.
Chapter 7. Digitalisation and cultural heritage protection
Digitalization is closely connected to sustainability in respect to number of museum visits. As Towse claims, even if museums are not providing constant changes to their exhibitions and collections, additional programs and techniques providing enhanced experience could contribute to sustaining or even enlarging the audience (Towse, 2010). Further, as presented by a pan-European survey made on cultural institutions by Stroeker and Vogels, museums of archaeology or history are some of the cultural institutions that demand the least amount of staff to adopt digitalization and respectively institutions of monumental care require the smallest percentage as part of their total budgets. In both of the cases, digitalization is the cheapest option in monetary real terms (Stroeker & Vogels, 2012, pp. 7,21-2). However, such an agenda was not highly pursued by the analysed nation states. One of the reasons for that missed opportunity could be that although digitalisation could lead to totality of the heritage community, encompassing the whole world, bypassing extreme economic, social, political constrains, it may be estimated as a threat to existing or expected conventional tourism.
Further, the decentralisation of heritage superintendence is primarily aimed at localities and their communities. That poses two subsequent considerations. At first, as already presented, the sample of countries possess underdeveloped infrastructure. Thus accent on on-site enhancement as 3D visualisation would follow the initial improvements. Secondly, in the case of access, it should be taken into account, that the given societies have restrains based on Internet penetration and computer literacy. Between 2006 and 2009 only Polish households were being close to the EU average access to Internet, Hungary and Romania presented improvements, whereas Bulgarian level was low and presented the slowest expansion rate (Eurostat, 2011, p. 186).
Given the problem of technological obsolence and constant investments, the Central and Eastern European countries would possess advantage in comparison to their peers which have already adopted broad digitalisation of their heritage. The analysed sample could outpace them with more modern and inclusive information and communication technology systems. But eventually, digitalisation would mean not only the cheapest, the easiest and the fastest access to cultural heritage, but could also the provision of information to treasure hunters or illegal traders. However, some of these considerations are common throughout the European Union. Of all types of cultural institutions, museums of archaeology and history provide the least access to collections and artefacts and institutions of monumental care are one of the least probable to preserve their products by the means of digitalisation . The relatively new introduction of cultural heritage digitalization in the programme Horizon 2020 is still to be studied and estimated for the achievement of the positive impacts sought by it. At the very least, it may help the Central and Eastern European states to finally complete the registries of their cultural heritage, as their underdevelopment is one of the most stark example of the common problems in the region.
The revised sample of nation states in Central and Eastern Europe does not conclude for substantial changes in protection of cultural heritage mainly due to increase of decentralisation and inclusion of private stakeholders in its administration. Although accounts for such were presented as in the cases of regionalised construction permits in Hungary, development-led excavations mismanagement in Poland, non-governmental organisations lobbying for private interests in Bulgaria and the distrust between public and private partners in cultural heritage protection projects throughout the region of Central and Eastern Europe, a clear causal link could not be easily established. It should be noted that such reports on lesser protection arise concurrently with an increased support for the conservationist agenda and even stronger totalist approach to heritage, which made the evidence further questionable in respect to a situation of restrained budgets in Central and Eastern Europe. Thus a less radical conclusion could be set in line with Pratt and Hesmondhalgh, that local economic or political interest could affect decision-making in the same way as on national level.
Chapter 8. Impact of the EU
At first, the massive European Union funding in infrastructure revealed to be substantial influence on cultural heritage superintendence on its own right. In the sample of countries, Hungary and Poland have been the most affected. The large-scale rescue archaeology provided for a boost for the whole sector. However, the system of financing is of crucial importance. Post-excavation analysis legally set to be financed by the investors proved a challenge for that type of heritage policy as private companies are reluctant to renumerate such. It could be argued that the states could be reintroduced as a major financing factor to fill the ever-growing void. In Romania and Bulgaria, where already built and excavated heritage is in risk, the rise of development-led archaeology could further endanger the situation.
Funding of research, as the reports and the statistics on which the current analysis is based, could be argued, is more positive for the cultural heritage administration. It leads to comparisons and benchmarking and thus common standards may be established. In that way, being complemented by some other EU initiatives such as mobility, a common labour market of pan-European specialists may occur. The problem with the lack of experts and archaeologists in Romania and the unemployment of the same in Hungary are clear examples of how the emergence of such a labour market could benefit the heritage superintendence in a greater European context, providing sustainability on the grounds of knowledge management.
The direct influence of the Structural Funds on the cultural heritage projects is increasingly important. However, the lack of efficient regulatory means leads to huge divergence of the outcomes. Across the sample the most common action is the revitalisation of the cultural infrastructure. It should be taken into account that such could develop into a construction growth policy and intentions of introducing mass cultural tourism, both of which may collide with local sustainability. An example of that is the reconstruction practice adopted most visibly in Poland and Bulgaria, which also interferes with the basic necessities of heritage protection and preservation. Broadly put, the process the EU funding for local projects could be dangerous as emphasis could be set on superstar projects or in developing bizzare interpretations aimed at greater visit inflow. As in the case of outsourcing the state regulatory, administrative and most importantly financial responsibility through decentralisation, the European Funds could be seen as a mode of similar arguement and dis-incentivise state control and budget allocations.
Turning back to the indirect influence of the European Union on heritage administration systems on the nation states of Central and Eastern Europe, it was presented that the major influence is in respect to the increased touristic output. Open borders and the possibility to travel are also to be taken into account with growing concern, as cultural tourism mainly in the form of conventional museums visits and number of tourists poses the question whether such would be sustainable. Heritage is thus captured by the preferences of the European middle class. Combined with the previous arguements of levels of effect, it could be stated that the overall impact of the European Union is in spreading a heritage „craze”.
Chapter 9. Some notions on the Council of Europe
At first, the positive influence of the Council of Europe could be mainly regarded by the increased protection of heritage across the sample of Central and Eastern European nation states. However, that has led to greater number of changes of laws, regulations and rules that could be hard to follow by the experts, academia and especially the civil society. As presented by the cases of Bulgaria and Romania, the impoverished communities may further be challenged with protection of heritage that is requiring higher costs in both financial and administrative terms, as new techniques are developing. econdly, the most influential convention of the Council of Europe – the Faro Convention on the Value of Heritage for Society that created the concept of decentralisation and inclusion of various stake holders in the heritage superintendence is providing additional risks. It is worth mentioning that although the Convention has entered in force only in Hungary and signed by Bulgaria, Poland and Romania are affected by its complementary leverage trough technocratic and academic initiatives. The case of Hungary revealed that such grounds may lead opportunistic scholars and citizens creating a dangerous set of values on historical heritage. Such could reignite nationalistic tendencies. It could be assumed that voters could establish a balance of stakeholders with old-school post-Communist academia and rent-seeking political class only in areas that emphasise ethnicity and pose yet again borders across Europe. Further, as in the case of Romania, decentralisation may just mean a retreat of the central government or, as in Bulgaria, provide moral hazard situations with municipalities expecting full reimbursements by the state on projects that they could not afford financially.
Conclusion
The dissertation aimed to answer the question whether the decentralisation of heritage administration and further the inclusion of private stakeholders in that process such as the civil society and the private companies provide more sufficient economic support and protection of heritage than the previously dominating centralised systems in Central and Eastern Europe. Based on the assumption that practical rather than purely legal aspects are to be revised, there was an estimation of the main influence that provided for that policy change with an emphasis on the European Union. After setting a sample of countries that presented arguably the most obviously stable agendas in the field, the analysis implemented cases and consequently a comparative review.1
The inquiry of the sample of national cultural heritage superintendence systems on the grounds of cultural tourism and museum and monuments visits has not provided an obvious conclusion to the question of decentralisation and stakeholders inclusion effectiveness in the triangle of social, economic and heritage sustainability. The positive results of that relatively new policy model are present or emerging in the Central and Eastern European region, however, centralized or most importantly re-centralized systems are not failing, moreover, they could provide sturdiness and stability in some cases2. Sustainable development of heritage is more dependable on national culture, professional inertia, adaptation and accommodation to the current organisational restrictions.
Taking into account both groups of risks and concerns, the main conclusion is the value of discussion and thus achieved balance. On national level, it would assess the realities on the ground before the adoption of laws and regulations that are not internally developed. The process requires appreciations of each possible level of stakeholders. Those would be the academics, the experts of conservation and preservation, the cultural managers, the politicians and administrators, the business concerned and the civil society.3
Economisation of heritage is also quite self-contradicting in terms of sustainability. Increases of prices of technical preservation and accent on economic benefits are posing a threat to fiscally challenged states and communities. The practice of socio-economic development based on heritage should keep account of culture and identity and further keep a balance with them. Although the decentralization paradigm protects rights such as those of indigenous and minority groups, brings borders down and fights the re-occurrence of nationalism, heritage administration is not and could not be a substitute for a working democracy and a meaningful safeguard of basic human rights. However, given the unprecedented rise of the economical value of cultural heritage in Central and Eastern Europe, even taking into account the variety of roadblocks encountered there, the European Union and the Member States in question would most probably continue with increasing the budgetary allocation for the sector.4
Additional conclusions could be drawn for the effectiveness of the initiatives adopted by the European Union. The decision-making process should take into account the great divergence between national cultural heritage policy and superintendence systems. At the present level, adoption of common standards based upon greater decentralization and devolution may put further internal pressures within the national systems. Academic methodology and statistical measuring would first to be developed to cope with the issue. Otherwise, these difficulties and controversial outcomes may affect the sole legitimacy of such research initiatives, even if they are theoretically and, further, morally right.5
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Appendix 1. Institutional “soft” power of Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria
The appendix aims to provide a brief analysis of the institutional influence the sample countries (Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria) wield through their representatives over EU-wide non-governmental organisations and lobby groups. The list of those organizations is taken from the signatories of the Europe Day Manifesto, members of the European Heritage Alliance (European Heritage Alliance, 2020). As seen below, some of them are international and not only ones representing cultural heritage at European Union-level. The analysis is based on the membership numbers from the sample countries to the total memberships of those organizations. It could be considered that the normal ratio between those numbers should be roughly 0.15, as it represents 4 out of 27 Member States of the European Union. As it is seen below, the medium institutional weight of Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria in those organizations is around 0.08, thus, lower than the presumed ratio “one country – one member”. In that way, it could be assumed that the sampled countries lack in the “soft power” in comparison to their Western European counterparts to influence the agenda of the international and supranational institutions, as well as the academic and professional paradigms in cultural heritage governance.
[...]
1 Only central government.
2 The Coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic was to some extent less affecting the museums in Hungary and Bulgaria compared to those of Poland and Romania, due to the higher dependency on the national budgets rather than museum visits (Vasilev, 2020).
3 Taken by the nationalities of the staff of the foundation as of 01.06.2020.
4 Taken by the nationalities of the Board of directors as of 01.06.2020.
5 Data not exact.
6 Membership through European Walled Towns.
7 Executive Board membership.
8 Board membership.
9 Executive management excluding country coordinators.
10 Board and Executive Committee membership.
11 Board membership.
12 Board of Directors membership.
13 Board membership.
Frequently asked questions about Central and Eastern European Cultural Heritage Governance
What is this document about?
This document is a comprehensive language preview which includes the title, table of contents, objectives and key themes, chapter summaries, and key words related to a dissertation on cultural heritage governance in Central and Eastern Europe.
What is the research question of the dissertation?
The research question is to determine whether the decentralisation and the inclusion of private stakeholders such as companies and civil society in the cultural heritage sector would provide more sufficient sustainability in economic and protection terms.
What geographical area does the research focus on?
The research focuses on Central and Eastern European nation states which are also Member States of the European Union.
Which specific countries are studied as case studies?
The case studies involve Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria.
What is the theoretical basis of the research?
The theoretical basis considers cultural heritage in the context of Europe, defines the problem of centralized vs. decentralized management, research approaches and methodology, key assumptions, limitations, outcomes, elements of heritage governance and management systems, and international and supranational impact (UNESCO, Council of Europe, EU Institutions).
What are the main elements of heritage governance and management systems discussed?
The key elements include museums and monuments, tourism, cultural heritage digitalization, real estate, local governance, and citizen involvement.
How do international organizations influence national heritage governance?
The dissertation analyzes the impact of UNESCO, the Council of Europe, and EU Institutions on national heritage policy and administration.
What historical context is considered for Central and Eastern European nation states?
The historical context includes authoritarian and Communist legacies, the transformation from Communism to free market economies, and a comparative analysis of nation states.
What aspects of Poland's heritage system are discussed?
The discussion includes historical developments, the system of authorities, preventive archaeology, private sector involvement, volunteers, and the impact of EU Structural Funds.
What challenges does Hungary face in its heritage management?
The document outlines historical perspectives, organizational structure, museums, private sector involvement, right to excavate, and the impact of EU Structural Funds.
How does Romania's heritage governance system operate?
The outline covers historical perspectives, the system of authorities, right to excavate, stakeholder access, cultural tourism, and the impact of EU Structural Funds.
What are the key features of Bulgaria's cultural heritage management?
The description includes historical perspectives, organizational structure, museums, preventive excavations, right to excavate, inventories, illicit trading, digitalization, private and non-governmental sectors, and the impact of EU Structural Funds.
What does the dissertation aim to achieve in its national level assessment and comparative analysis?
It aims to assess historical context, cultural employment, funding of culture and cultural heritage, cultural and heritage tourism, museum activity and visits, EGMUS data, digitalization, and the impact of the EU and Council of Europe.
What is the key assumption made in the dissertation?
The key assumptions that would be made and used in the following work are the intrinsic cultural value of cultural heritage and the self-explanatory need of its protection and preservation.
What key indicators are used for the comparative analysis?
Key indicators for the comparative analysis include employment in the cultural sector, public expenditure on culture, tourism statistics, and museum activity (visits, funding, staffing, etc.).
What sources of data are used in the research?
The research uses data from the Compendium of Cultural Policies and Trends in Europe, the HEREIN System, the European Expert Network on Culture and Audiovisual, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), and the European Group on Museum Statistics (EGMUS).
- Arbeit zitieren
- Veselin Vasilev (Autor:in), 2022, Governance and Policies on Cultural Heritage Protection in the European Union, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.hausarbeiten.de/document/1281245
