Emil StoyanovMember of the European Parliament

Third Conference on the mega project of the European Union Europeana for a single digital library was held in the European Parliament in Brussels. The project Europeana gathered in Brussels, the Bulgarian scientific and political elite with the people from the European institutions, engines of the large-scale project. The conference was initiated by MEP Emil Stoyanov aiming to coordinate all Bulgarian efforts to present the Bulgarian cultural and historical heritage in the digital network.

It was attended by leaders of the Committee on Culture from both the European and the Bulgarian Parliament, as well as leading Bulgarian experts from libraries, museums, archives. Special guest was the Bulgarian EU Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva. She greeted the participants of the conference and said: "In today's world, where connections are digital, we must not stay behind. I have no doubts that your presence here will accelerate the digitalization of our cultural heritage. For us it is very pleasant, as we, who represent the Bulgarian people in the EP and I, as your Commissioner, we are trying to open more windows to Bulgaria and to our culture."

Jacques de Decker, a member of the Comité des Sages (a high level group for strategic analysis on the digitalization of the European cultural heritage) to the European Commission, gave very high evaluation of the event organizer. He said: "Mr. Stoyanov, you are a prophet of this cause in Bulgaria. What we could wish is also in other countries to have more people like you who are so good advocates of Europeana." Jacques de Decker added that he learned many useful things from the Bulgarian specialists participating in the conference.

The Member of the European Parliament Emil Stoyanov said: "Certainly we have moved forwards since the start. If we need to mention the absolute numbers we have now for one year and a half more than 20,000 digitized documents, and we have started from only 5-6000. This is a very big success for me. Another important thing we have achieved is that Bulgaria is now in the European Parliament. This means that our scientists, our MEPs, gathered together with other European experts and specialists from the European Commission and the Comité des Sages and talked with a good sense about Bulgaria and its good way to digitize its cultural heritage."

The chair of the Committee on Culture in the European Parliament, Ms. Doris Pack, said that the European is a flagship project for the European Union and its stability. "Here, we do not only make laws for food, health and consumers, we also deal with policy. We care about what the European Union means. And this is a Union of states based on culture and on common values. European Union is more than everyday life -this we have to show- otherwise the Union will not be so stable...we must tell European stories, and Europeana is exactly that."

 
The 22 official guests of the conference, who represent various Bulgarian cultural institutions, called on the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture to finally establish a National council on digitalization of Bulgarian cultural and historical heritage, which will have a coordinating role on this issue and reminded that they have pointed that to the Bulgarian Minister of Culture Vejdi Rashidov at the very first conference on this topic, held in Plovdiv in April 2010.