Source: European Parliament
Question for written answer E-000968/2025
to the Commission
Rule 144
Catherine Griset (PfE)
In France, the local, non-relocatable heritage restoration sector has around 234 000 enterprises, with 500 000 direct and indirect jobs, including 35 000 craft jobs.
Woodworkers, stonemasons, ceramicists, leatherworkers, weavers, as well as paintwork and stained glass restorers: these professions are almost exclusively carried out by micro-enterprises employing fewer than 10 people and the managers are often older people.
A lack of time and funding, as well as the administrative burden involved, mean that these entrepreneurs take on very few apprentices, with the risk that precious and sometimes age-old know-how is being lost forever.
New ways to fund this learning need to be imagined and developed, reducing the administrative burden on apprenticeship managers, freeing up their time and giving them access to more suitable, cheaper premises, etc.
- 1.Is the Commission planning such initiatives, for example through its Horizon Europe research and innovation programme?
- 2.Is the Erasmus exchange programme effectively involved in funding this learning and exchange of know-how in the crafts?
- 3.Along the lines of artists’ residences, are there residences for artisans specialising in heritage restoration?
Submitted: 6.3.2025