Infobulletin based on the minutes of the 10Th Meeting of the EMU Presidium 
Instituto Musical "A. Vivaldi", Bolzano, Italy, 8 and 9 March 2002

Present were:  Jan van Muilekom (President), Gerd Eicker (Vice-President), Wilhelm Dahl, Mario Sperenzi, Timo Veijola, ViktorZadnik, Gerrie Koops (Secretary General, report)

1. Opening of the meeting and adoption of the agenda 
The president, Jan van Muilekom, opened the meeting with a special welcome to Amelia Borghese, who was present as Mario Sperenzi's interpreter. He thanked Mario Sperenzi, the Italian Association and the Instituto Musical "A. Vivaldi", for their hospitality and for arranging the meeting. 

2. The minutes of the 9th Presidium meeting held on 14 and 15 December in Espoo, Finland 
Referring to the motions enclosed in the minutes and not mentioned on the agenda of the meeting: 
- The change of the statutes by a notary in Switzerland has still to be carried out. 
 - A letter has been sent to Mr Bair (EU) and to several parliamentarians in Brussels about the importance of EMU networks and a European development centre. The Dutch parliamentarian Mrs Sanders phoned to say that she is very interested in joining the conference.
- Viktor Zadnik will represent EMU during the congress in Austria in April. 
- Writing EMU history: Two students from the history department of Utrecht university might be interested in documenting the history of EMU. It would be nice if this could be published in 2003 to coincide with EMU’s 35th anniversary.

3. Developments/general remarks 
The president gave the floor to the presidium to report on any outstanding developments within his/her country/association.
Gerd Eicker reported that he had met Euro parliamentarian Mrs Sleiger last month. She informed him that in Brussels a law is being drafted which will revoke the subsidies for institutions if there is already another institute in the area carrying out the same tasks. This could mean that in future several music schools would not be subsidised anymore. 
Jan van Muilekom commented that, last year, in the Netherlands, the Ministry of Internal Affairs had also commenced a discussion on the need to subsidise music schools. The presidium decided that these matters should be discussed later in the General Assembly. Gerd will send Gerrie some documents he has already received . 
Mario Sperenzi reported on the situation of the music schools in Italy. Last month a law was introduced which stated that all music studies in public music schools would be stopped. At the moment music schools in Italy are not subsidised by the state. Therefore, a meeting with all music schools was held last November to discuss and to estimate the levels of funding in Italy and to contact the Ministry with a view to finding alternative avenues of funding. 
The president offered them EMU's help if needed.
Timo Veijola reported:
- That, in this theme year against drugs, the Finnish music schools will hold an end of term concert in co-operation with the parliament.
- that the board of the Finnish Association would visit Ireland next week. In the meantime they will assist the Irish board in the establishment of their association.
- on the EMC meeting and Conference in Copenhagen, on 1-3 March, with the central theme - ''Cultural identity or when the colour has another sound". People involved in multi-cultural music making gave several excellent speeches and examples, from Denmark, were presented. A certain incompatibility seems to exist, however, between multi-cultural music making, with its inherent freedom, and multi-cultural music education, which is more limited in scope. Timo handed out the program of the conference and remarked that it would be interesting to continue this discussion at a later date. 
Wilhelm Dahl announced that the Norwegian association is preparing a document, to be presented to Norwegian parliamentarians, which records the last 15 years of live music in Norway.
. Jan van Muilekom reported on some interesting new projects in the Netherlands. One project – “ Guildhall” developed in England, in conjunction with the conservatory in Utrecht, makes it possible to create music in several hours, even without any prior music education. Descriptions of the project will be available in the summer. Jan will arrange a workshop for the presidium later on. The other project concerns cooperation between music schools and schools who give education on middle professional level (such as nurses, shopassistants, technical assistants etc).

- Festival in Slovakia: the presidium has been invited to a festival in Slovakia form 4 till 6 May. Viktor Zadnik will represent EMU. Gerrie will inform Slovakia.
- Publication on Professional Qualification: the VdM in Bonn has finished the publication for printing. 5000 will be printed. The VdM will send 5 publications per country to Switzerland to be handed out during the General Assembly, including an application form for a free order of some packages and a list with prices for sending and handling costs which should be returned to the VdM within one month. The rest of the booklets will be sent to the EMU office.
- Funding of the IMEE I project: instead of receiving 6000 Euro from the EU to reach the promised amount of 30.000 Euro for IMEE I, EMU have to pay back 9000 Euro so that in total we received only 15.000 Euro for the whole IMEE I project. The EU decided not to fund the project in Amsterdam because no official written permission (only by telephone) was actually given to move the project from Great Britain to The Netherlands and a big amount of costs turned out to be not declarable. 
- IMEE 2 project: The EU has not accepted EMU's proposal for the IMEE2 project, concerning the production of intercultural music teaching materials, because it does not fit into the EU programme.
- The Irish Association: two years after their entry to the EMU the foundation of an Irish Association
has yet to be completed. It was decided that the Presidium will ask the General Assembly to extend their membership until the end of 2002 to give Ireland one more chance to establish their association. The EMU office will inform Ireland.
- Manifesto: The text has been sent to those individuals who, hopefully, will underwrite it. 
- EMC board elections: the proposal of the president to continue the membership of Timo Veijola has been accepted. The EMU office will inform the EMC.
- Membership Poland: Wilhelm tried to contact Mr. Cizek of the Ministry of Culture. It seems that Poland is in the same situation as Ireland and has yet to establish an official association. 
- Presidium meetings: Leopoldo Santos from the Canary Islands is working on the meeting in the Canary Islands from 17 till 20 October. The Hungarian association is trying to find a town that can arrange a meeting at the beginning of 2003. 
- Website EMU: EMU's website was launched on the 1st of January. The presidium is extremely delighted with the results of the working group and complimented their professional work so far. 14 Countries will be represented during the seminar for national website contact persons, which will be organised by the working group and held from 12 till 14 April in Utrecht in The Netherlands. The presidium declared unanimously that the seminar would be an excellent opportunity to further develop the site. It was stressed how very positive it is that not only presidium members are working on behalf of EMU. So far the statistics have not been added because a special application is needed. Because of the huge importance of statistics on the website Wilhelm will ask his colleague - Even Fossum Svendsen,, who is working on the new statistics, to put the most important points of the 2000 brochure on the website. (because there are no Italian results in the 2000 brochure Mario will send the Italian statistics to Gerrie as soon as possible). 
The program for the website seminar in April is very interesting. Some small suggestions were made: Due to time constraints, it will be difficult to discuss financial matters, including funding. It would be advisable to give the floor only to the co-ordinators who can report on interesting developments. 

4. General Assembly in Bern, Switzerland in May 2002
The general topics for the first morning (09.00 till 12.00 h) of the General Assembly will be:
The presidium activities from October 2001 till May 2002. This will be sent in writing to the members beforehand after the agreement of the presidium.
Financial results (appendix 4 has been adopted by the presidium) and the balance: The president thanked the general secretary and her colleague Dini Soer for the clear summary. The balance will be sent to the Presidium later on. There is a positive result of 6203 Euro (including the refund of 9230 to the EU). At the end of last year the EMU allready had some 50.000 Euro own properties. 
The special financial commission (Hans Brupbacher and Thierry Chleide) will be invited for the final control of the financial realisation.
Referring to the positive result, the president suggested asking the General Assembly to spend some money on special projects and on the development of the website. These projects should be of interest to several countries and able to be developed on a national level. For example: bringing children on contra bass, the quality system in the Netherlands, an EMU handbook or special booklets on a special theme and several other projects which could be put on the website. The list of interesting projects, which are going on in EMU countries, made by Jan Willem Mantel some years ago could be used.

Having discussed the proposal of the president, the presidium decided to draft a proposal to the General Assembly to spend Euro 7.500 extra this year on collecting special projects and Euro 2.500 extra for theactivities of the website working group.
Instead of an oral report on what is going on in their countries, members this year will be asked to fill in the questionnaire on interesting projects like was sent to the EMU some years ago. The EMU office will send a copy of this questionnaire ( and the results at that time collected by jan Willem Mantel) together with the agenda of the meeting.
Following the agreement of the General Assembly, a small working group of, for instance, two specialists within the associations will be asked to collect well all the needed information and prepare it for the website. One person should be responsible for the financial section.

Proposal for a new enquiry formula: underlining of the Weimar declaration will be added and a question to determine if they are the association with the most members in their country. 
Admittance of new members
Proposal to allow the presidium to make a written proposal for the working program and budget 2003, at the end of 2002, and offer it to the vote to the members by regular post.
Presentation of the publication on Professional Qualifications. The president wondered if there was any possibility of assisting teachers to work abroad - Germany, for instance, has too many piano teachers and not enough elementary music teachers; In Italy it's quite hard for teachers to find a job in music schools. A kind of job bank could be included on the website.
Presentation of the future plans of the website working group (with reference to their seminar in April) by the chairman of the working group Timo Klemettinen and plenary discussions on the plans.

The program for the afternoon of the first day ( 14-17.30 hours):
14.00 - 15.00 plenary presentation of the working groups ( of this afternoon and tomorrow-morning)
15.00 - 16.30 working groups first round ( including 10 minutes on future workingplans for EMU)
16.30 – 17.00 coffee break (small talks between the president and the working group leaders)
17.00 – 17.45 plenary session

The program for the second morning( 8.30- 10.45 hours; adjusted because of changes in the programme of the Swiss Association))
08.30 - 09.45 working groups second round
09.45 - 10.00 coffee break
10.00 - 10.45 plenary session 

The following issues will be discussed during the workshops. Delegates and specialists on the themes who are already present during the General Assembly will be asked by Jan and Gerrie to prepare and lead a workshop.
1. Forms of examination
2. Positive school environment
3. Music and internet (long distance learning)
4. Pop music
5. Contemporary music 
6. Music and dance theatre
7. Special underdeveloped instruments
8. Special gifted students
9. Preschool-education

The working group leaders should ideally send a small paper (1/2 page) to the secretary general before 20 April, which will be sent to the members before the meeting in May.

5. Congress with national politicians/officials on a development centre 
17 Countries have already supplied the names of politicians who could be invited.
With the help of Pedro Sarmiento, president of the Spanish federation, Jan has established contact with the secretary of culture. He received a formal reaction of interest and the secretary of culture asked him to contact the council of culture. Pedro Sarmiento will try to arrange the first meeting, hopefully next week. Following this, Jan will send a letter on behalf of EMU.

6. Coming European Youth Festivals
The EMU office has received a letter from Denmark to say that they are able to organise the festival in 2004.
Jan will contact Jens Bloch and Per Sjoberg and will ask them to prepare a budget and a working plan on headlines to be presented during the GA in May. 

7. Training on group teaching in Schloss Kapfenburg (1 hour by train from Stuttgart)
Sixteen Enrolments have been received: (Five from Spain, one from Sweden, one from Belgium, nine from Germany) A further eight people from Germany are interested. From an organisational point of view, and to make the training financially viable, there should be a minimum of thirty participants. The deadline for enrolment has therefore been extended to 15 April. The small number of enrolments so far seems to be a consequence of the timing of the program (the summer vacation is not a popular time) rather than to its content – six lectures have already been arranged. 
Gerd will inform Schloss Kapfenburg that the presidium has decided to pay the rest of the minimum costs if there are enough participants to create a viable program from an organisational point of view. Gerrie will inform the members about the final deadline and will attach to this a list of teachers prepared to give a lecture.

8. Application for reduction of the fee 2001 by Hungary
Because of financial problems in 2001, Hungary was and is still not able to pay the contribution fee. They have sent a written application for a reduction. It has been included with their financial results of 2001.
The presidium decided to allow Hungary a 50% reduction of the fee for 2001.

9. Possible new members
- The Czech Republic has sent a filled in questionnaire for new members, and they have undersigned the Weimar declaration. The General Assembly will be asked to accept the association of the Czech Republic as full EMU member. The Czech Republic will be asked to give a small presentation during the GA. 
- Latvia has been invited to observe the General Assembly. They will send one observer (red).

10. The General Assembly 2003 in Spain
A proposal has been received from Rosina Sobrido, La Coruna who would like to organise the General Assembly 2003 from Monday till Friday and a Congress during the weekend. 
It was decided that, because of reduced plane costs during weekends, the General Assembly could better be held from Thursday (arrival) till Sunday (departure). It might also be interesting for the participants of the GA to be able to take part in some interesting parts of the Congress. The president will inform Rosina Sobrido.

11. Suggestions for a discussion platform
The suggestion to start a discussion platform on political marketing does not seem to be a good idea because the website is an open system.
The other point concerning co-operation between music schools and regular schools would be interesting. Gerrie will ask the webmaster if it would be possible to hold an online ‘discussion forum’ on this last topic during the whole General Assembly, which could make the GA more lively. 

Closing
It was suggested that the brainstorming on European Orchestra’s should have been put earlier on the agenda. After that the president closed the 10th meeting of the EMU presidium.