Two calls for proposals were launched by DG EAC on April 11th to co-finance actions promoting intercultural dialogue on a European scale and a national scale. The open call targets emblematic projects and initiatives at European level, which would reach as many people as possible and highlight the objectives of the Year. The restricted call exclusively solicits actions at national and regional levels with a strong European dimension via the 27 National Coordination Bodies

The open call has a budget of 2.400.000 EUR, which will be distributed to 8 to 10 actions. The restricted call, which will support one action in each Member State, has a budget of 3 million EUR. Given the limited means available, parties interested in participating in European projects on the theme of intercultural dialogue should also bear in mind other Community funding programmes supporting this theme - a guide is due to be published on the EC web at the end of May.

Now that the Calls for Proposals have been published, one can wonder if the Call for Ideas on Intercultural Dialogue of last autumn did indeed have a bearing on the new Call for Proposals. DG EAC published the results of the Call for Ideas on its website without explicit analysis at the beginning of April. Yet it had presented a statistical and content analysis of the results already in January. It had looked at the project ideas submitted in terms of the selection criteria they would fulfil. Have the criteria of the Call been adapted to what applicants are likely to deliver? This seems to be the case with the ‘trans-sectoral dimension’ of projects: the Commission had found that the ideas submitted scored low in this regard, and the ‘trans-sectoral dimension’ therefore appears to have not been made an explicit selection criterion. On the other hand, the same EC assessment revealed that the youth, education and European dimensions of the project ideas were mostly satisfactory. The open and restricted calls therefore emphasise precisely these criteria. Unfortunately, both the Call for Ideas and the new Calls for Proposals were only published on the site of DG Education and Culture. This stands in the way of an uptake from other sectors and ultimately also discourages cooperation between sectors on intercultural dialogue.