European Year of Intercultural Dialogue

Intercultural dialogue has long been a principle supported by the European Union and its Institutions. The year 2008 was designated "European Year of Intercultural Dialogue" (EYID) by the European Parliament and the Member States of the European Union. It aimed to draw the attention of people in Europe to the importance of dialogue within diversity and between diverse cultures.

There is no single and universally accepted meaning of "Intercultural Dialogue". Indeed when the European Commission launched EYID by asking 27,000 EU citizens what they thought the phrase meant, by far the most common response (36%) was total puzzlement. However, a forum organised by the Council of Europe in November 2006 suggested the following:

Other definitions or usages have been closer to concepts such as inter-religious dialogue and often to active citizenship learning. In a number of countries the phrase refers to dialogue between indigenous people and immigrant peoples, and it can also be used as a metaphor for forms of contact between countries which are not based on military power.

The text adopted by the European Union on EYID does not use any specific definition, but it underlines the role of intercultural dialogue in:

EYID has a number of antecedents in the European Union's policies.

There have been a number of "European Years", beginning in 1983 with the European Year of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and the Craft Industry. Recent and planned European Years include:

No further European Years have yet been announced, although Commissioner Ján Figeľ, who originally proposed EYID, has reflected publicly about the possibility of designating 2009 as a European Year linking Education, Culture, and Creativity. A full list of European Years is maintained by the European Parliament [2]. It will be seen that many of these years, particularly the more recent ones, are in the educational and social fields. In general they have been designated and run directly by the European Union and its Member States; however, some (such as 2005) have been designated and run by the Council of Europe and others (such as the 2001 European Year of Languages) were joint operations between the two bodies.

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