What’s new with AgoraEU, and why does it matter?
These are busy and decisive times. As the trialogue approaches, the European Parliament is working to consolidate its positions, with committees putting forward amendment after amendment on the main funding programmes that will shape the next MFF.
Among them, AgoraEU is emerging as one of the key frameworks for supporting culture and socially impactful projects. But before diving into the details, it is worth taking a step back and asking: what’s new with AgoraEU, and why does it matter?
What is AgoraEU
On 16 July 2025, the European Commission presented its proposal for the next Multiannual Financial Framework (2028–2034), aiming for a simpler, more focused EU budget. To achieve that, one key change is the merging of existing programmes into broader, more coherent ones, and AgoraEU is one of them.
The new programme is structured around three strands:
- Culture: supporting cross-border cultural creation, cooperation, and access, and reinforcing the role of the cultural and creative sectors.
- MEDIA+: boosting Europe’s audiovisual and video game industries, while also supporting independent journalism, media diversity, and access to reliable information.
- CERV+: promoting fundamental rights, equality, and civic participation, tackling violence (including gender-based violence), strengthening democracy and the rule of law.
AgoraEU will bring together what is currently known as Creative Europe and the CERV programme into a single framework, with the goal of connecting culture, media, and civic engagement, encouraging collaboration across sectors to strengthen democratic participation and societal resilience.
This merger does not come out of nowhere. It reflects a broader vision the EU has been developing over time, where culture is understood as an enabler of democracy — something that is very much in line with the vision articulated in the Culture Compass. Culture, according to this approach, helps create the actual agora: the conditions in which thinking, disagreement, and dialogue can take place and act as a social fabric, holding communities together.
On paper, this is a strong and much-needed vision. Yet, when looking at the structural choices behind AgoraEU, some questions remain.
One of the most significant changes is the removal of the cross-sectoral strand previously present in the Creative Europe Programme. This strand was specifically designed to foster collaboration within the cultural and creative sectors while addressing shared transversal challenges such as digital transition, news media pluralism, and social inclusion. In other words, it supported practices that do not fit neatly into a single category.
With the new structure, hybrid artistic formats such as socially engaged practices, risk being pushed into predefined boxes (“culture”, “media”, or “civic”), in a way that might be problematic, because their value often lies precisely in combining these dimensions. The result may be weaker proposals, or the exclusion of projects that do not fully align with the priorities of a single strand.
It is worth noting, however, that Article 10 of the current proposal does retain elements of this cross-sectoral approach, stating that ‘the Programme shall support cross-sectoral cooperation and innovation across the cultural, media and civic fields’. That said, this provision remains quite vague at this stage and is not accompanied by dedicated funding lines or a clear budgetary allocation, making it difficult to assess how far it will effectively support such practices.
This is something to keep in mind as the programme takes shape, and as future applicants (artists, NGOs, local authorities, educators) begin to navigate its opportunities and limitations.
Does this mean that AgoraEU should be dismissed altogether? Of course not. There are also positive elements worth highlighting, starting with the proposed budget.
About budget
In the original proposal of the Commission, the financial envelope for AgoraEU is set at €8.58 billion, roughly twice the combined budgets of the current Creative Europe and CERV programmes. However, recent developments in the negotiations within the European Parliament, where the CULT and LIBE Committees are working on the programme, bring some encouraging news.
Following its recent adoption, the official position of the European Parliament on the MFF includes a proposed €2.14 billion increase for AgoraEU, and this is not the only promising signal coming from this institution: earlier this winter, rapporteur Hélder Sousa Silva proposed a €12 billion budget. This marks a positive step in the MFF negotiations, as the adopted text will form the European Parliament’s mandate for negotiations with the Council.
As these negotiations continue, Culture Action Europe is also calling for the use of digital fines to further top up the programme, as a way to help balance the often unauthorised extraction of cultural content and copyrighted works used to train AI systems. This proposal has not gained much traction so far, but we continue to put it forward, in the hope that it might still be taken up in the course of interinstitutional negotiations.
More budget would, of course, mean more opportunities for artists and cultural workers. But the good news is not only about scale, it is about possibility. A reinforced budget can help protect what might otherwise fall through the cracks of the new structure. It can allow for more inclusive calls, support experimentation, and open the door to long-term, community-based projects: the kind that require time, trust, and continuity, rather than short funding cycles and easily measurable outputs. For organisations working at the intersection of culture and social impact, this could make a tangible difference.
What’s coming next
The CULT and LIBE Committees have been working intensively on the draft report on AgoraEU, which is expected to be released soon. In parallel, Culture Action Europe has been proposing amendments to MEPs and contributing to key consultation moments to put forward core priorities such as:
- using digital fines to top up the AgoraEU budget;
- ensuring clear earmarking for each strand;
- maintaining a balanced sectoral approach in the Culture strand, covering not only books, music and architecture, but also performing arts, visual arts, crafts and design;
- creating a rapid-response scheme to protect artistic freedom and support artists at risk, and introduce a fast-track micro-grant scheme for first-time applicants, emerging artists, and socially engaged arts;
- ensuring social conditionality and fair pay under simplified funding proposed in AgoraEU, potentially tying the Regulation into the EU Artists’ Charter;
- clarifying the financing of Programme Desks, not only their role.
Negotiations are still ongoing, and the coming weeks will be decisive, particularly in the lead-up to the European Parliament’s vote on the AgoraEU report, expected in June. This is the moment to act and influence the direction AgoraEU will take.
If you support a stronger, more ambitious AgoraEU, you can sign this open letter backed by a coalition of more than 550 organisations from the cultural and creative sectors, independent media, and civil society advocating for an increased budget for the programme. You can learn more about it and how to become a signatory here. And if you haven’t yet, explore and endorse the Ask, Pay, Trust the Artist campaign to stay updated about the latest news on cultural funding in the current EU policy cycle and on AgoraEU.