The Governing Council approves the Strategic Plan for Culture 2028, which seeks to place culture at the heart of society

The Governing Council approves the Strategic Plan for Culture 2028, which seeks to place culture at the heart of society

• The Basque Government will lodge an appeal for unconstitutionality against a State provision that encroaches on the Basque Country's powers 

The spokesperson for the Basque Government and minister for Culture and Language Policy, Bingen Zupiria, appeared at the usual press conference after the Governing Council, where he gave an account, among other issues, of the Strategic Plan for Culture 2028 approved at today’s meeting. This plan is one of the 16 Strategic Government Plans foreseen for the 12^th Legislature.

The Minister of Culture stressed that the Strategic Plan for Culture 2028 is based on the desire to place culture at the heart of society and the aim of making it more central to the public policies of the institutions. Likewise, according to Zupiria, the Plan places citizens at the centre of cultural policies, seeking to respond to their needs and the well-being of society as a whole. “This Plan vindicates culture as an essential element for the shaping and cohesion of a country, of a community, insofar as culture makes us human beings, makes us Peoples. Culture also strengthens the solidity of our cultural and political community and the vitality of our language,” the spokesperson pointed out. The Plan also sees culture as a national challenge, as an instrument and a way to build a more egalitarian, plural and cohesive society.

The Culture 2028 Strategic Plan has structured the cultural policies for the next six years by establishing three axes: creation, supply and transmission; and, on the other hand, by establishing two cross-cutting commitments: the revitalisation and normalisation of the Basque language and equality between women and men. Finally, the Plan is based on and vindicates a way of doing things: the auzolan.

This Plan aims to be a shared roadmap for the cultural policies of the Basque Country as a whole in the period 2022-2028, i.e. the reference framework for all public institutions. For this reason, the validity of the Strategic Plan for Culture 2028 will extend to the new term of office of the Provincial and City Councils and to the entire next term of office of the Basque Government.

AGREEMENTS OF THE GOVERNING COUNCIL

As usual, the spokesperson, Bingen Zupiria, provided information on other issues discussed in the Governing Council, including the following:

On the one hand, the Governing Council today approved the External Emergency Plans of three companies: SOFIAM IBERICA (Iruña de Oca/Araba), GASES OXINORTE (Barakaldo/Bizkaia) and BAKELITE IBERICA (Lantarón/Araba). As Zupiria explained, these external emergency plans are special civil protection plans and their purpose is to articulate the external response to certain hypotheses of accidents that may occur in these facilities with the consequent external effect on the company itself.

The spokesman also announced that the Governing Council has given the go-ahead to take into consideration the amendment to Law 2/2006 on Land and Town Planning to improve its implementation. In this sense, he expressed his support for the draft law formulated by the EAJ/PNV and PSE-EE parliamentary groups to clarify and correct extracts of this text. Specifically, the bill aims to clarify the calculation of the time periods for the suspension of permits, approvals and urban development authorisations regulated in this law.

The Governing Council has also authorised today the lodging of an appeal of unconstitutionality before the Constitutional Court against an additional provision of the General State Budget Law for 2023, considering that it interferes in the executive tasks of the Basque Government and violates self-government, since the State is imposing computer tools to carry out the executive tasks of this Government in subsidy and agreement procedures. The State Budget Law for 2023, without prior consultation, imposes on the Basque Autonomous Community the use of an application of the Tax Agency in the processing and management of all subsidies and agreements granted by Basque bodies in the execution of the funds of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan. “The legal services warn of the risk involved in the imposition of state tools in Basque procedures, which would entail illegitimate interference in the public tasks entrusted to us, given that the State would take executive action in our procedures, contrary to what the Statute of Gernika recognises,” Zupiria pointed out. 

On the other hand, the Governing Council has today given the green light to this call for grants which aims to promote coexistence, respect for human rights, empathy and solidarity in society and 250,000 euros will be made available for the implementation of projects on coexistence and human rights by the City Councils and other local Basque entities in 2023. In the field of Coexistence and Human Rights, the programmes and activities included in the call are aimed, among others, at promoting the commitment to human dignity, human rights and a conciliated coexistence; as well as at fostering a critical and delegitimising awareness in society in relation to all forms of violence, terrorism or violation of human rights. And in the area of Diversity and Solidarity, actions are envisaged that promote the values of positive management of diversity, the prevention of racism, xenophobia or hate crimes.