Belgian musician Hubert Biebaut was elected new President of ECA at the Annual Congress that took place Sunday 10th of October in Amsterdam. New members of the Executive Committee, elected for a 2 years periode, are film directors Zuzana Brejcha from Austria and Franz Ernst from Denmark and Bert Holvast, director of the Dutch Federation of Artists was re-elected for another period. In the Executive Committee 2004-05 are also Renate Christin, visual artist, Germany, Elena Karova, sculptor, Slovakia and Mihail Cristian Lotreanu architect, Romania that all were elected last year.
The Congress agreed on a statement in support of the UNESCO Draft Convention for the Protection of the Diversity of Cultural Contents and Artistic Expression, underlining the need to make this Convention binding and the wish of ECA and its members to contribute in this process.
On the plan of action for the coming year is continued monitoring of EU policies, for example the new programme of Cultural Cooperation and the discussions on a new Directive of Trade and Services. The co-operation and exchange among ECA members from 25 European countries continues to be high priority and new activities and measures for improvement were proposed.