This year’s CIRCLE General Meeting and a round table on European Art and Culture Between Free Trade and Cultural Diversity. A Delicate Dialogue? will be held in Helsinki, Finland, on 15–17 December 2006. The event is being organised by the project’s leading partner CUPORE with the help of the Boekman Foundation. The round table focuses on the status of the arts and culture in the evolving global economy. It is increasingly important to consider cultural diversity together with the development of international trade regime and trade rules. Also, national cultural policies need to take into account these external forces. The conference will bring together experts and practitioners in international cultural cooperation and world trade to investigate, analyse and assess the responses and stands taken by governmental, trans-governmental and corporate actors in relation to international conventions and treaties defining the status of the arts and culture in the evolving global economy. The purpose is to redefine the “cultural exception” in the processes of trade liberalisation in a manner that will provide common grounds for achieving: * a better balanced cultural exchange of ideas, * improved protection of intellectual property rights, * a stronger guarantee for maintaining and increasing cultural diversity both at national and international level. The perspective of the conference will be global, but a special focus will be placed on the reactions and stands of the EU both in respect of its own internal free markets, and its responses to the world free trade agreements and conventions.