Methods by which the Council of Europe can develop cultural cooperation between its members
Motion for a resolution
| Doc. 23
| 26 August 1949
The representatives of the countries which are Members of the European Consultative Assembly,
holding that their peoples have no more urgent or more elevated reason to .unite than the determination
to defend the unchanging ideas and the civilising values which constitute the most precious
part of their common heritage ;
and considering that these ideals and those values can be defined in a number of principles, which are clearly comprehensible by all and which it is important to recall,
declare that:
1 The only culture worthy of the name is that which aims at the spiritual enrichment and the moral improvement of the human being. It is not in the service of any one nation or any one class, but of mankind as a whole.
2 No national or ideological consideration can be allowed to take priority over the cultural rights. No power must be allowed to prohibit or to hinder, in whatsoever field it may occur, the free search of the individual for truth.
3 Culture cannot be regarded as an instrument
of production. It cannot be measured by the technical progress which it permits, or by the resulting increase in power. It is embodied essentially
in the disinterested search for knowledge and in a flowering of personal qualities, which may assume the most elevated or the most humble
form according to the individuals concerned.
4 Culture
must not be the privilege of a minority. Every man is entitled to it, just as he is to freedom, and it is the duty of every democracy
to assure access to it for each of its citizens, irrespective of economic and social inequalities.
5 European culture, which is the product of a long tradition, is at one and the same time a synthesis and the source of diversity.
Its unity has been affirmed during the course of the years through one constant demand: that the spirit be exalted.
Its diversity is that of any free creative force.
On account of both these characteristics, it is opposed to totalitarianism, or to any political or educational system based on force.
At the same time, however, it calls on the free peoples to unite not only in its defence but also to serve it better—each one within his own frontiers
and also internationally—by trying to abolish the economic and social barriers to the right to equality.
