ABSTRACT

KALEIDOSCOPE is the name of an initiative introduced in 1996 under the European Communities’ cultural policy. The programme intended to promote contemporary artistic creativity, encourage the training and mobility of young artists in all cultural areas, and support innovative cultural events with a European dimension, as well as seeking to encourage greater public awareness of Europe’s cultural heritage. Although most of the activities that the programme financed were rather small-scale and amounted individually to a maximum of ECU 50,000, there were a number of larger projects such as the European Community Youth Orchestra and the European Capital of Culture. In 2000 the Culture 2000 framework programme, which was to run until 2004, replaced the previous activities of Kaleidoscope and aimed to implement a new approach to cultural action. Culture 2000 was given a total budget of €167m. for the period 2000-04. (See also Ariane; Raphael.)

KALININGRAD, formerly known as Königsberg, was part of German East Prussia until this territory was annexed by the USSR in 1946. The territory offered the USSR direct access to the Baltic Sea and was one of the most militarized places in Europe during the Cold War. However, the dissolution of the USSR in the early 1990s has transformed the Kaliningrad region into what is effectively a Russian exclave which is cut off geographically from Russia by Lithuania, and whose economic situation is desperate. In 1992 it was declared a ‘free economic zone’ in the hope of attracting foreign investment. This has not happened. As both the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) expand to include Poland and Lithuania there are real dangers that this exclave will be completely isolated. The governments of both Lithuania and Poland are strongly hostile to Russian suggestions of a closed land corridor between Russia and Kaliningrad. Relations are likely to be further soured with the introduction of visa requirements for citizens of the enclave. Tensions also exist between Russia and the West over Russian

deployment of nuclear weapons in the Kaliningrad region. Sensitive to the situation of the enclave, the EU established Kaliningrad as a priority area in the 2002-03 Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States programme. This followed earlier financial assistance aimed at tackling severe environmental problems in the region.