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Analysing EU’s External Cultural Relations: Case Study on the Role of National Cultural Institutes in Croatia

For some time now, the academic and policy literature has been preoccupied with the definitions, terms and scope of the multi- layered phenomenon of cultural diplomacy. A massive aspect of cultural diplomacy is traditionally related to the establishment of national cultural institutes abroad. In the EU, the culture has been recognized as integral part of EU’s external relations. The main objective of this paper is to analyse the existing EU’s mechanisms for external cultural relations and, in this regard, observe the role of national cultural institutes in the youngest Member State – Croatia. Considering the institutes’ long tradition of exporting culture, the questions were designed to find out whether their goals nowadays are nation- centred, or aimed at fostering the European integration processes and international cultural relations. For this purpose, a semi- structured interviews with cultural professionals in the selected national cultural institutes in Zagreb were conducted. Additional information is provided based on the content analysis of institutes’ official web sites and EUNIC as the main cooperation platform for European external cultural relations. This paper has not been inspired by finding the gap in the literature – on the contrary – the proliferation of literature has encouraged me to do a research in the field which branches out in new directions.

EU’s cultural diplomacy ; EUNIC ; external cultural relations ; international cultural cooperation.

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