The relevance of eu external cultural synergies: The external action strategy and institutional intercultural attitudes

Abstract

European Union (EU) is a supra-ideologi-cal construct in permanent change. Changing times bring the European External Action Service (EEAS) to its cultural strategy. EU external cultural strategy with the complexity of political and social realities defines the two main steps followed in this study: a) EU intercultural strategy analysis, and b) the role and the place of EU Delegations (EU Dels) and the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC). The ba-sis of the analysis is the qualitative approach. It analyses various institutional manifestations of power and status discrepancies in the EU on ma-cro and micro institutional levels. How does the EU manage to communicate its values and identity in a context of potential cultural and ideologi-cal differences? Does “wanting to understand the other” seem neglected, whereas “wanting to get understood“ seems to have become an EU inter-cultural attitude driver? The aim of this paper is to identify the process and relevance of EU cultural synergies and its external intercultural image through various involved actors.