ECA sent the following letter to the Ministry of Economic Development and the Ministry of Culture, Monuments Protection and Sport in Georgia on 12 October.

The European Council of Artists (ECA) is an umbrella body of national interdisciplinary organisations representing artists, in Georgia the Council of the Chairmen of the Creative Unions. Present in 25 countries, both within and outside the European Union, it is estimated that we represent 220,000 professional artists.

To our consternation we were informed by the Union of Writers of Georgia that the Ministry of Economic Development claims ownership of their premises, Machabeli Street 13, Tbilisi, which was granted to the creative writers by the Georgian patron Akaki Khoshtaria exactly 90 years ago. Since then the building has been used by the Union of Creative Writers with the aim of developing Georgian literature.

We summon that in the case of legal nonpreciseness on the ownership of the buiding by the Georgian Union of Writers,please take into consideration that Georgia is in the process of ratifying the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, which your country approved on 20 October 2005 in Paris. This convention obliges all signatories to support the institutions of cultural civil society and encourage them to cooperate in all relevant fields to protect and promote a flourishing cultural climate.

Against this background the outstandingly important role of the Palace of Writers for the long list of exceptional talents (Tabidze, Leornidze, Robakidze, Gamsakhurdia etc), dating back to 1917, should be reason enough to consider the building a monument of high cultural value to be preserved for the benefit of Georgian literature and its European reputation.
Agreed by the General Assembly of ECA 1 October 2007 in Sibiu,

Yours sincerely

Michael Burke, president