Paper short abstract:

This paper illustrates how cultural heritage policy is increasingly employed as a means to facilitate EU integration processes in Southeast Europe. By focusing on heritage programmes funded by IPA it provides new insights in the Europeanisation of heritage in relation to enlargement.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses how cultural heritage policy is employed as a means to facilitate EU integration processes in applicant countries in Southeast Europe. While recent studies about the adaptation of legal and administrative procedures to the requirements of EU membership have expanded our understanding of European integration processes, relatively little work has been done on the role of cultural heritage programmes in this particular field. Several programmes have been funded in applicant countries by the Instrument for Pre-Accession (IPA) of the European Commission as alternative to the more coercive strategies of the EU to stimulate European integration. However, while the EU aims to use these programmes to facilitate European integration, it is uncertain whether these nationally and regionally based programmes will lead to such outcome. This research will provide more understanding in how the European Commission aims to use cultural heritage programmes as contribution to EU enlargement. The main questions that this paper aims to answer are: why does the European Commission invest in locally and nationally bounded cultural heritage programmes as a means to bring about grand European integration processes such as regional development and transnational cooperation? What is the Commission's vision on how this should work and what does that tell us about the way in which the EU aims to employ cultural heritage policy as facilitator of EU enlargement? New insights will be provided in the Europeanisation of heritage in relation to the wider field of enlargement.