Towards the development of European capacities for the protection of cultural heritage at risk: the “Key Elements of a European Methodology to Address the Protection of Cultural Heritage during Emergencies”

In recent years, a variety of actors, national and international authorities and organisations have been debating how to strengthen the protection of cultural heritage from the growing natural and man-made risks that threaten it.

Although this helped ignite the debate, demonstrating the urgency of addressing all related issues, the results were very fragmented which in turn inhibited a clear-cut institutional stance, perhaps because they came about through conventional and largely non-formal processes, according to the authors.

Against this backdrop, at European level, a path has been set first by PROMEDHE (2016-2018), then by PROCULTHER (2019-2021) and currently by the PROCULTHER-NET (2022-2023) EU-funded projects to provide a sound working basis to define a common language and approach, useful to build technical and operational capacities in this field.

In particular, in order to address these pressing challenges, the PROCULTHER project launched a broad consultative process to assess and analyse existing capacities in terms of cultural heritage protection in order to develop, in the framework of the Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM), the document entitled Key elements of a European Methodology to Address the Protection of Cultural Heritage during Emergencies.

The purpose of this document is to promote a stronger and more effective protection of cultural heritage at risk by building on a common and shared understanding of the subject at European level and providing a solid basis for institutional strengthening and capacity building by capitalising on the experiences and competences gained in this field by the following countries and organisations: Italy, France, Spain, Turkey, ICCROM, also including Cyprus, Jordan, Israel and Palestine, PROMEDHE partners, and other countries and organizations involved as extra-consortium partners in the project.

PROCULTHER-NET Project. Technical Bulletin N. 1, March 2023 pp. 51-57
KEYWORDS: cultural heritage, SOP, common standards for interventions, European methodology