At a horizontal level, inter-ministerial co-operation has been traditionally pursued by the Ministry of Culture also by means of memoranda of agreements signed, for instance, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the field of international cultural relations, with the Ministry of Education for arts training and education in schools, and with the Ministry of Justice for carrying out cultural activities in prisons aimed at the rehabilitation of offenders.
A key development in horizontal co-operation has been the participation, since 1999, of the Ministry of Culture in the Inter-ministerial Committee for Economic Planning (CIPE) of the Ministry for the Economy: a strategic committee, which is also responsible for the allocation of EU Structural Funds to the Regions in Southern Italy. Such areas have benefited from several million EUR in capital investments in the cultural field under the 2000-2006, 2007-2013 and 2014-2020 Plans, allocated to operational programmes managed by national and regional authorities. Their aim was to enhance cultural assets in the five Italian “convergence Regions” (Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Puglia, Sicilia), not only by boosting safeguarding, but also access, along with the connected economic activities dealing with the creation of new entrepreneurship, planning and capacity building.
As for vertical co-operation among government levels, common problems and quite frequent conflicts between the State and the Regions have often been dealt with in the framework of the State-Regions Conference – also acting as a sort of “clearing house” for any controversy – and, more rarely, by the Constitutional Court. Actually, official representation of regional interests in cultural, as in any other matter, is entrusted to the Conference, where the heads of the regional departments for culture regularly meet to discuss issues of common interest in two special coordination committees, the Interregional committee for cultural goods and the Interregional committee for the performing arts, also acting as lobbying organizations, pursuing institutional reforms towards a full implementation of a more federal governance structure in the cultural field.
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