Barcelona to host Second European Forum on Cultural Industries over two days (29 and 30 March) as prologue to Informal Meeting of Ministers of Culture on 31 March More than 500 representatives of European culture seek new strategies to boost the sector

The Ministry of Culture of Spain and the European Commission, in collaboration with the Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona, are organising the European Forum on Cultural Industries, the foremost meeting foreseen by the Spanish presidency of the European Union in the field of culture. The Forum precedes the informal meeting of ministers of Culture of the European Union which will take place the following day, 31 March, in Barcelona.

Representatives from EU institutions and the various Member States will be attending the event, along with high-level experts on each of the subjects to be discussed; technical experts from the European Commission's working groups; and representatives from the cultural industry, the economy and the training sector. In total, more than 500 professionals and 70 speakers are expected to attend the event.

The main point of interest during the first day of the event will be the unveiling of the preliminary version of the “Green paper on cultural and creative industries”, produced by the European Commission on the basis of prior discussions between the cultural industries platform and the “ad hoc” governmental working party. The data and statistics in this report are highly revealing, since they provide a real map of European culture and its habits and trends.

After this, the chair of the European Parliament's Committee on Culture will discuss the proposals made and the challenges facing cultural industries in Europe today.

The work agenda planned for Monday 29 March will also involve making progress on and looking in greater depth at the five areas for discussion to be covered during this event:

• The financing of cultural industries
• Raising professional standards in cultural industries
• Internationalisation of cultural products
• Intellectual property and copyright management
• Regional and local development