Reflections on the Past and the Present of Manele Music in Romania
Published November, 2024
by Dragoș Rusu
In today’s Romanian society, few topics have the power to polarize as much as Manele (the more commonly used plural for manea) music – a genre of contemporary pop music with Oriental/Balkan influences – owned, produced, and played by the Roma societies spread for centuries throughout various geographic areas of the country. Although over time, several ethnomusicologists, researchers, and scholars (such as Cerasela Voiculescu, Margaret Beissinger, Speranța Rădulescu, Anca Giurchescu, Victor Stoichiță, Adrian Schiop) have tried to explain Manele as a social phenomenon, the public discourse around it remains truncated and spectacle-driven. More often than not, the deeper issues and dynamics behind understanding this phenomenon are left untouched, and are instead being treated from a scandalous and tabloid angle.
I conducted a brief content analysis of media mentions regarding events where Manele bands were invited and observations from my own experience on this topic to illustrate how the public discourse around Manele has been constructed and how we relate to Roma cultural goods.
The topic of Manele, with all its social, geopolitical, economic, and cultural implications, continues to provoke Romanian society. Whenever it comes up, whether in public discussions or more private settings, it sparks a wave of reactions, impressions, and often contradictory opinions. Besides being among Romania’s most popular music genres, Manele act as a social and cultural agent, spreading rapidly amid a storm of stereotypes and prejudices. No one is immune to this “contagion,” and those who distance themselves from Manele position their public discourse in opposition to those who embrace them.
Paradoxically, Manele are scorned during the day and desired at night. They have even come under restrictions by state authorities. For instance, in Cluj-Napoca (a city in northwestern Romania, is the unofficial capital of the Transylvania region), a law prohibiting taxi drivers from playing Manele while on duty was passed. In Timișoara, Mayor Nicolae Robu banned the performance or broadcasting of Manele in public spaces, as well as the practice of making song dedications, “regardless of who requests them and for whom.” His decision was later sanctioned with a warning by the National Council for Combating Discrimination (CNCD).
On the other hand, Manele are eagerly requested at Romanian parties, where, as the night intensifies, people admit with a hand on their heart that “maybe a manea would hit the spot.” Manele are simultaneously loved and despised, an ambivalent reaction to a cultural product that reminds us of the repressed ghost of Balkanism and the period when the region was under Ottoman occupation. Manele contain that seductive, intriguing, inexplicable “something” that makes people move impulsively and embrace friends over a drink, evoking strong feelings that rarely leave anyone indifferent. They leave a powerful mark on the collective affect.
Where does this ambivalence toward Manele come from? Why do they polarize Romanian society so deeply? Why aren’t Manele treated simply as another music genre (like rock or jazz, which also began from a marginalized position before achieving cultural acceptance)? Why is there no distinction between “good” and “bad” Manele, as with any other music genre? Why have we reached the absurd situation where hundreds of thousands, even millions of Manele are musically undifferentiated, all lumped together as if they were identical? Why aren’t Manele broadcast on radio or TV, and why are they banned from public spaces?
The Ottoman Empire
Early references to the terms manea and Manele appear in Romanian texts from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, during the period of Ottoman suzerainty over the Romanian principalities, as a genre of instrumental dance music, brought by Roma musicians from Istanbul. Some of these classic Ottoman-origin Manele were adapted over the centuries by exponents and promoters like Dimitrie Cantemir and Anton Pann. Etymologically, the word “manea” is of Turkish origin: mâni is a form of Turkish folk song in quatrains, or, according to the Romanian Dictionary (DEX), a “love song of Eastern origin, with a sweet and drawn-out melody.”
However, the Manele I am discussing here are aesthetically and ideologically distinct from those of the Roma who came from Turkey, although they share a common past. Aesthetically, because several centuries separate them, during which manea evolved from Ottoman- and Eastern-influenced folk music played by Roma musicians at noble gatherings (using various instruments like violin, cimbalom, double bass, and later, clarinet and saxophone) to the “electrified” manea, in which the organ, synthesizer, and percussion are essential elements, accompanied by violin, bass guitar, clarinet, and saxophone. Throughout this stylistic evolution of Manele instrumentation, the voice has maintained its authority, and virtuosity has remained a constant concern for Roma musicians and solo vocalists alike.
Ideologically, because several centuries ago, almost exclusively Roma musicians preserved Romanian folk music, although over time some Romanian musicians joined them. Naturally, the perception of what constitutes a music band (or taraf) and their role and purpose has changed, as has the message conveyed by the music and lyrics, which are now adapted to address the issues facing contemporary society. Therefore, to try to “understand” the music, one must place it within the time and space in which it was created; spatial and temporal proximity become tools for deciphering it.
Romania has a long history of racism and racial discrimination against Roma, an extremely old and complex, unwritten history that various political regimes have attempted to erase. It is a history not taught in school textbooks, but its effects are still visible today. This history places Roma in the collective imagination somewhere between the role of a children’s bogeyman and the Noble Savage. There is particularly a long and complicated history of disregard for the contribution Roma have made to Romanian culture, and folklorists have played a significant role in shaping this perception. Roma musicians were not granted the right to their own ethnic and cultural identity, and Romanian folklorists—and not only them—conducted an ethnic selection of Balkan culture for nation-building.
Balkanism
Alina Haliliuc argues in her work, Manele Music and the Discourse of Balkanism in Romania, that in contemporary Romania, the stigmatizing discourse of Balkanism has been reappropriated by a segment of the elite. As a discourse of differentiation, Balkanism has periodically been embraced within the region surrounding the Balkan Mountains for national assertion against neighbouring countries. The author notes that in Romania, for example, “the stigmatizing logic of Balkanism has been part of the nationalist rhetoric of intellectual and political elites since the 19th century.”
From a naming policy perspective, Balkanism can be viewed as a subcategory of Orientalism, a concept developed by American-Palestinian philosopher Edward Said in his 1978 book Orientalism, and defined as “a European ideological construct—a tool through which writers, philosophers, and colonial administrators related to Eastern culture, customs, and beliefs.” In Imagining the Balkans, historian Maria Todorova argues that Balkanism differs from Orientalism precisely because, “while Orientalism deals with the difference between assigned types, Balkanism addresses differences within the same type.”
Maria Todorova clarifies that official and intellectual public discourse has been shaped around the theme of Romanian exceptionalism within the Balkans, and the term “Balkan” became a disparaging category reflecting a repressed, dark side that needed to remain concealed during the nation’s process of self-emancipation. Over time, the term Balkan developed a pejorative connotation, and even though many Romanians resist being grouped with “Balkan peoples,” in reality, the West often views everyone in the region, collectively, as Balkan.
In public discourse criticizing Manele, the most frequently cited issues include bad taste, misogyny, sexism, the promotion of lawlessness and connections to underground and mafia networks, as well as grotesque and trivial spectacle, imitation, kitsch, and the “Balkan” or “Balkanized” character. These aspects foster a kind of nationalist spiritual resurgence accompanied by a discriminatory ethnic-nationalist discourse—not positioned explicitly or institutionally, but wrapped in concepts like musical taste or the right to free expression.
The Art of Lăutărie in a high-culture society
For several decades, we’ve heard in the public discourse of some Romanian intellectuals, and advocates of high culture, as well as in much of the mainstream media, that Romanian society and culture risk becoming “Turkified,” “Orientalized,” “Balkanized,” “Gypsy-fied,” “Guță-fied,” and more recently, “Manele-fied”—meaning they are in danger of absorbing the ethics and aesthetics associated with the world of Manele and “infecting” the entire society. Paraphrasing Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto, we might say that a spectre is haunting Romania—the spectre of Manelization!
This ghost of Manele and the associated panic around Manele-ization has a predecessor in the Romanian philosopher Constantin Noica, as Paul Breazu and Mihai Lukács note in their article On the Manelization of Romania in Identitarian Times in The Attic. In his work On Lăutărism, composed of three different texts written between 1973 and 1981, Noica speaks of the ever-present threat of lăutărism, which could claim anyone as a victim. Noica’s lăutărism is characterized by the imitative quality of culture and cultural products, by an excess of improvisation and the way of producing culture “by ear,” as the lăutari do, lacking in creativity and good taste.
“I would rather confess that we are all threatened—and God knows if we’ll escape this—by this risk of lăutărism. […] What prospects does culture have, with isolated major successes and the rest as mere lăutărism? […] I have found no better term, nor do I seek another, for it is about the achievement of expressing things somewhat ‘by ear,’ ultimately doing as Barbu Lăutaru, who astonished even Liszt by reproducing a melody he had just heard with ease.”
Thus, the archetype of the lăutar musician (with its attachment to a socially inferior, peripheral status and Romani ethnicity), who has endured centuries of racial discrimination, can never stand on equal footing with the archetype of the high-culture intellectual. The lăutar is eternally condemned to remain in triviality and superficiality, finding clever tricks or “cunning” ways to solve problems. He cannot produce culture in any way but “by ear.” This same lăutar who in the five centuries of Romani slavery was often a servant to the boyars (the term “slave” was rarely used; instead, they were called “servants,” which, for some, diminishes the perceived impact of slavery in Romania) and who was sometimes sold (or given as a gift) between different boyars, is the predecessor of today’s manelist, tacitly envied by advocates of high culture for his success. At the same time, he is loved and adored by most of the population, with whom he speaks in a common language—a public that identifies either with the lyrics of Manele or with its lingering Oriental rhythms of longing, sorrow, or joy.
The Paradox of Manele Music in Romania
So, what’s the deal with Manele? Why do they continue to spark both sympathy and love, as well as disgust and hatred? And why does a new “scandal” about Manele seem to arise each year? A simple Google search for “scandals” related to Manele shows dozens of examples. At the 2017 TIFF festival in Cluj Napoca, a Manele band took the stage. The festival manager himself commented, “Everyone went wild, and the Kana Jambe band, which also appears in the documentary film, surprised us. They misled us with two or three Manele and then switched to classic Roma music.” Naturally, the audience was divided into two camps.
Also in 2017, singer Carmen Șerban shot a manea music video at the library of the “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest, in collaboration with DJ Milionor, sparking another wave of strong reactions. Two years later, at the Gopo Awards Gala, a Manele recital by Dan Bursuc’s band triggered yet another scandal. Singer Loredana Groza recorded a song (and video) with a lineup of famous Manele artists, which quickly drew polarizing reactions. And the list goes on: Florin Salam on the same stage with Goran Bregovic, and Manele artist Sorin Copilul de Aur filming the video for his song “La culcare, noapte bună” at the Bucharest Opera in 2008. When DJs invited to Untold and Electric Castle festivals played a manea by Adrian Minune, the audience split once more, and a flood of criticism, accusations, and insults poured through news feeds for several days. Furthermore, Electric Castle organizers publicly announced on their Facebook page, a few days after the “incident” with the manea, that they thanked Tommy Cash (the DJ in question) for his “last-ever performance at the festival.” And the cherry on top in 2024 – Coldplay invited young Manele artist Babasha on stage.
Not to mention that Manele have never been played on a public radio station. Manele artists, however, adapted and started their radio stations as early as the ’90s, where dedications flowed without the need for approval from the former mayor of Timișoara. Manele have also rarely appeared on TV, with a few notable exceptions: New Year’s Eve programs, celebrity gossip shows, and talk shows featuring or discussing stars. This marginalization led to the emergence of several TV stations specialising in Manele, with Taraf TV seeming to be the longest-running.
The dichotomy between “us” (white, Western-oriented Romanians aspiring to Western values) and “them” (Roma Manele artists, former lăutari or not, who throw money to spite their enemies and who supposedly lack creativity and good taste) has always been present and visible. Each new “scandal” has provided the validation needed to reinforce this dichotomy, integrating it further into the normative ideology of the collective mindset and public discourse around Manele. Every Manele incursion into public space has been intensely covered by the media and condemned by society’s “elite.”
However, these media-driven scandals or social media flare-ups have never aimed to foster a deeper understanding of this social phenomenon or to resolve a potential cultural conflict. Instead, they have been presented in a tabloid-like, scandalous tone, focusing more on appearance than on reality. From my experience of living in Romania, I believe that these endless pro and con debates about Manele have never sought any real solutions; they have only deepened the divide between Romanians and Roma, between culture and non-culture, quality and kitsch, good taste and poor taste. The majority has always been in a position of power, dictating social, cultural, and economic norms to any minority, top-down, from the centre to the periphery. The centre has, of course, reserved the right to tell only its version of the story—the normative one—while controlling the reins of public discourse.
Why is there a tendency to separate “good” lăutărească music (“the old stuff”) from the “new” Manele, which is actually a stylistic continuation of lăutărească music? Why isn’t the manelist considered a musician, regardless of how much they demonstrate their musical abilities? Why can more recent musical projects by a group of Romanian artists (Steaua de Mare, Raze de Soare, the Future Nuggets collective—who, starting from Manele, have created new, hybridized cultural products described as “psychedelic Manele”) benefit from all the opportunities offered by the capitalist apparatus and the cultural establishment, while Manele themselves cannot? What is it about the Manele universe that classifies everything related to it into a single block that provokes such strong adverse reactions?
There are multiple answers, but judging from the documented history of Roma discrimination throughout centuries, one may think that it becomes quite obvious that at the core, we’re dealing with an ideological conglomerate of assumptions and stereotypes rooted in a pervasive racism within the majority of Romanian society towards Roma communities, combined with a type of classism that emerged in the post-communist period and has evolved to the present day.
Romanian anthropologist Vintilă Mihăilescu calls this phenomenon manelism, which (paraphrasing Marx) is the “primitive accumulation of desire,” suddenly emerging after the fall of communism. After decades of censorship, poverty, and deprivation, Romanian society, freshly entered into capitalism, manifested itself like a dog that had been kept on a chain its entire life and was then suddenly released. The wild capitalism of the 1990s generated a free market for materialism, individualism, excessive consumption, “screen presence,” competition, winners and losers, friends and enemies, the “slick” and the “naive.” Mihăilescu insists that “it’s not the Manele that have ‘Maneleized’ society, but society – or ‘something’ from this society – that gave birth to Manele and ensured both their success and their contempt.”
Thus, manelism is what created Manele, not the other way around. This manelism stirs revolt because it seems to be the exact opposite of the “post-communist civilizational dream, which exasperates because (it still) persists many years after the fall of communism.” Thus, “we hate Manele for a largely unconscious reason, and for that reason, it’s even more powerful and insidious: they express (…) that ‘cursed part,’ that ‘irrationality’ of human societies that rational-economic modernity has strived to repress, and that we, in turn, strive to deny to be recognized as modern.”
I believe that Manele remind us of our Balkan condition, the scars left by the threat of “Turkishness” and “Gypsy-ization,” our Eastern affiliation from which we cannot escape, no matter how ambitious our Western projections are. These fears, swept under the rug, surface and explode in the public discourse on Manele whenever a new scandal arises on the subject, scandals that are never created to be resolved.
Thus, Manele seem to be a mirror of Romanian society. As Vintilă Mihăilescu said, they speak the language of anyone willing to listen, positioning on the same level both the “strawberry pickers” who, forced by the incompetence and neglect of the post-socialist state, went abroad to work, and entire categories of the population who remained in Romania and have been ignored, despised, and left abandoned by the state over time. In this jungle of wild capitalism, everyone has done what they could and knew how to do, and Manele have managed to capture and reflect, like a mirror (and with real success), this social, cultural, and economic state.
The Ambivalence of the Roma Musician’s Condition
The cultural situation surrounding Manele does not exist solely in Romania but also finds similarities in other countries with complicated histories of ethnic discrimination, especially against Roma people: in Bulgaria, there is chalga and polyrhythmic Ork music; Čoček (a musical and dance genre that emerged in the Balkans in the early 19th century); in Serbia, there is turbo-folk; in Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Macedonia, there is tallava. Discrimination based on ethnicity and class can also be found in the music of other regions: electro chaabi (or mahraganat) in Egypt; cumbia in Mexico and many countries in South America; dabke in Syria; the music of the Kurds (Kurmanjis) in Turkey.
Roma musicians living in the former Yugoslavia have expanded the musical form to include variations in 4/4 and 7/8 rhythm measures. These forms of musical innovation express a decentralized, counter-Eurocentric discourse of Roma music and Romani futurism, infiltrated within Western societies, where music is normally understood as a high form of art based on tradition. Modern European societies recognize and relate to music through its various functions integrated into numerous power structures, transforming it into an institution in itself—a commodity with the potential to be converted into capital.
I believe that what all these geographical areas and associated musical styles have in common is a blend of racism and classism, where the cultural products of a minority (most often ethnic) are not accepted by the majority of society and are forever condemned to a marginal status, subject to censorship and extermination.
Depending on the context, the lăutar and the manelist display a chameleon-like identity. In her book Romani Routes: Cultural Politics and Balkan Music in Diaspora, American folklorist Carol Silverman expresses this ambivalence of Roma musicians, who, depending on the context in which they find themselves, perform certain social roles, determined by the demands expressed by the dominant side. Thus, when a Roma musician plays the role of a “lăutar” or “manelist,” delivering the stereotype expected of him or her, do they internalise or subvert the ethnic and racial norms? Silverman argues that to answer this question, we must ask ourselves “What real options does the Roma musician have, and how does he or she manage or fail to operate within them; […] (can they) perform outside the stereotypes attributed to them? And if so, what are the outcomes?” Paraphrasing British anthropologist Judith Okely, Carol Silverman notes that when dealing with the non-Roma (gadje) social universe, the identity of the Roma musician is “exoticised, hidden, degraded, or neutralised.”
Thus, many Roma maneliști in Romania, when confronted with issues surrounding their identity, refuse to be considered maneliști by the majority social body and negotiate their identities contextually. In 2017, I interviewed Florin Salam for Vice Romania magazine, and when I asked him about racism toward the Roma and Manele, Salam responded that he does not fit into any genre:
“If you watch a few of my television appearances, so to speak, I’ve always said there’s a difference between an artist and a manelist… It’s sad but amusing. More amusing than sad. Sometimes, I think that these people have made us great in a way, they motivated us a lot. And that’s why we’ve always done better than the rest. That’s why they’ve seen the most beautiful cars, the most beautiful houses with us before they did with them, because they marginalized us. This rupture was created… For me, it was something else. I’ve never taken the ‘gypsy’ thing seriously.”
As Mihăilescu mentioned, Manele may sometimes be used as a weapon, as they serve to challenge the authority of public spaces or institutions. This is why listening to Manele at full volume in public is more than just a love for music; it is rather a form of protest, a defiance of the establishment and authority, a sign of civic disobedience. In the past decade, there have been several attempts from parts of the Romanian intellectual elite (often left-leaning) to redefine the public discourse surrounding Manele and to reimagine the relationship we have not only with Manele, but also with Roma cultural goods in general. In another article from The Attic, Romanian musician and researcher Cosmin Mirea attributes the relationship between “us” and “them” to a series of power dynamics.
“Yes, there is a huge appetite for Roma cultural products, but the Western Self wants to consume them on its terms and conditions; they must first go through an aestheticization, a kind of softening… Yes, we want to consume Roma culture, but please, nothing too real, nothing too disgusting, nothing too out of control.”
Manele in the Present
Currently, there have been more frequent and broader public discussions regarding racism, the emancipation of the Roma intellectual elite and the Romani language, the current condition of the Roma concerning institutional acknowledgement of Roma slavery, and the Holocaust in Transnistria (when 25,000 Roma were deported under the orders of Marshal Ion Antonescu – a figure who today ranks 6th in the top 100 Greatest Romanians on Wikipedia).
Users of new social media platforms (such as TikTok or Instagram) are the agents of a new kind of Roma empowerment, popularized and based on a discourse of reclaiming Roma identity, culture, and the history of the Roma. The global anti-racist discourse resonates in Romania as well, and the roles are beginning to fluidize and flip. The power dynamics are starting to find new balances through the emancipation of Roma elites or community representatives, the construction of a discursive framework in society aimed at repositioning Roma cultural products, and an institutional validation of Roma culture through the creation of museums, cultural centres, and the “insurrection” of a new wave of Roma researchers in the normative academic environment.
Since one rarely talks about music when discussing Manele in the public space, and more about a structural social phenomenon, we could say that Manele are Roma cultural products, primarily created for the dominant Romanian society. On the other hand, if we manage to set aside the veil of prejudice and discuss Manele from a musical perspective, the music belongs to anyone who wants to listen, to discern between good and not-so-good Manele.
In recent years, the world of Manele has gone through some interesting transformations, partly due to the new wave of Roma cultural emancipation, the emergence of TikTok as a democratic content production tool, and the stylistic fusion with trap music, resulting in a modern hybrid called “trapanele.”
Viorel Ioniță, a Roma violinist from the band Mahala Rai Banda, compares what is happening now to what happened with the lăutărească music performed by Maria Tănase versus Romica Puceanu:
“There’s a form for radio and TV and a more underground expression—for weddings and private parties. This is happening now with Manele. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, they transformed lăutărească into something more gadjikanes [non-Roma], and now with Manele, to avoid being seen as Manele, there are trap-Manele, ‘trapanele’. But why? Because it sells to the youth, both Gadjos and Roma; it’s a big market. […] Abroad, they want me to be exotic, crazy, original, authentic. But here, in Romania, producers tell you not to sing in romani because it doesn’t sell. It’s strange. You have to force yourself to be like everyone else, because otherwise, no one will hire you. It’s a completely different vision.”
Between 2016-2019, I organized a music festival in Bucharest called Outernational Days, which aimed to bring traditional and contemporary music from around the world (including Manele music) to the same stage—music that does not necessarily conform to Western norms. I developed the concept of “outernational” in opposition to “international,” and the curatorial effort focused on redefining the broader (and colonizing) concept of world music.
The first two editions of the festival were held at Grădina Uranus in Bucharest, in sector 5, a district home to several Roma communities that were at risk of being evicted by the local authorities. In 2016, at the festival’s first edition, one of the special guests was Dan Armeanca, considered by all Manele artists a founding father of the genre. Between the first and second editions, we organised an event at Club Kran in Bucharest with Adrian Minune (and his band) alongside Ethiopian musician Hailu Mergia. At the second edition in 2017, Florin Salam performed (with his band), and Dan Bursuc participated in a discussion about racism and cultural appropriation alongside American researcher Margaret Beissinger and Romanian writer Adrian Schiop.
From my position as an organizer, I had the privilege of observing the different dynamics of institutionalized racism and the refusal of various private (and even state) companies to sponsor our event because the festival’s artistic program included Manele. One bank responded that our program was “too Balkan,” and a telecommunications company told us, “Everything sounds fine, just no Manele.” The institutional fear of corporations associating in any way with anything related to the world of Manele is still omnipresent. However, at the institutional level, we had a victory when we managed to convince the Sector 5 City Hall to donate 200 festival passes to the predominantly Roma local community.
The second edition of the festival, which featured Florin Salam, succeeded in polarizing opinions. Among the criticisms of the festival was the claim that we had created a “safe space” for white hipsters and corporate workers, that we had “stolen” the Manele from their natural context and placed them on a stage alongside artists from all over the world.
Where Do Manele Get Their Intrinsic Power?
Perhaps before all else, we should ask ourselves where Manele derive their intrinsic power, the kind that can bring large groups of people together while paradoxically dividing entire communities. To answer this, we need to look more critically at the discriminatory history of Roma musicians (and Roma communities in general), the way we, as the dominant, majority, and normative society, relate to the cultural products of the Roma, how we accept or fail to accept the fact that, for five centuries, Roma people were slaves in Romania, how much we understand and accept our own Balkanism, and how we react to institutionalized racism or the classism with its moral panics, which tell us that our society is on the brink of cultural collapse and “manelizare” (the rise of Manele).
Additionally, we can look critically at how we, as the majority, react to violent acts of racism committed against Roma communities, at our awareness of our privileges and positions of power, and at how the state (and a significant portion of its citizens) stubbornly refuses to accept systemic racism and acknowledge Roma slavery and the harms done to Roma for centuries. These harms extend into the present day and are the result of exploitation, marginalization, and racial discrimination.
We are still in a position of power where the majority apparatus that discriminates (on ethnic or racial grounds) is also the one that defines discrimination within public discourse, leaving the discriminated group without any defence. And the description of reality is power; to describe something is to normalise it, and this description is made from a position of power. Therefore, to “make peace” with Manele and the world of Manele musicians, we must first make peace with our turbulent past, accept our mistakes and privileges, acknowledge our status of power, and, ultimately, accept a little bit of ourselves, so that we may at least reach the possibility of understanding and accepting the Other.
Written by: Dragos Rusu
Photos: Cosmin Mirea, Outernational and Youtube
This article is brought to you as part of the EM GUIDE project – an initiative dedicated to empowering independent music magazines and strengthen the underground music scene in Europe. Read more about the project at emgui.de.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.