Franck Riester, Minister of Culture, welcomes the success of the twinning with the Tunisian Ministry of Cultural Affairs after more than two years of project. Fully funded by the European Union as part of its Neighbourhood Policy, this twinning enabled the Ministry of Culture to support the Tunisian Ministry in its efforts to modernize and adapt to the new expectations of civil society and the cultural world.

The closing seminar, held on September 3 in Tunis, in the presence of Mr. Mohamed Zine El Abidine, Tunisian Minister of Cultural Affairs, and Mr. Olivier Poivre d'Arvor, Ambassador of France to Tunisia, The European Parliament has taken stock of this operation and opened up new prospects for cooperation.

As part of this large-scale project, some 40 European experts carried out missions to Tunisia and a dozen study visits were organized in France for the benefit of Tunisian officials of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs.

Through a participatory methodology of peer dialogue and exchange of experience:

- scenarios have been proposed for the central administration and national cultural institutions to deconcentrate their decision-making circuits;

- territorial strategies for cultural development have been defined;

- the information and digital communication capacities of the Tunisian Ministry and its institutions have been developed;

- the monitoring, evaluation and foresight capacities of this administration have been strengthened.

The experiments conducted in Tunisia in three pilot governorates made it possible to put into practice the methodologies developed during these two years.

Among the extensions of the twinning, a new program on tourism enhancement of Tunisian cultural heritage, carried by the Ministry of Culture and funded by the European Union, will start in October 2019. This program aims to rehabilitate a number of heritage sites in the medinas as well as the museum and archaeological site of Carthage. This project will be based on a core of experts from the services of the Ministry of Culture and its services with national competence.

This European cooperation mechanism, which was a first for the Ministry, illustrated our country’s commitment to a Europe open to the dialogue of cultures, especially with its Mediterranean neighbours.” Franck Riester, Minister of Culture