“A new cultural contract is needed between civil society and lawmakers.” – Lars Ebert
This piece was originally published by Culture Action Europe member, Boekmanstichting, in the Dutch language, for the issue, “Boekman #145: Artistieke vrijheid onder druk.” (Artistic freedom under pressure).
Safeguarding Artistic Freedom in Europe: A new cultural contract is needed between civil society and lawmakers
Lars Ebert – Secretary General, Culture Action Europe
Why Artistic Freedom Matters Now
The 2024 Global Expression Report shows that freedom of expression worldwide remains stagnant, with forty countries classified as being in crisis. Within Europe, the outlook appears more favourable: 19 EU member states are categorised as “open,” seven as “less restricted,” and only Hungary as “restricted.” At the EU level, artistic freedom has become a formal policy priority, with the current Work Plan for Culture (2023–2026) recognising it as fundamental to human creativity, critical thought, and innovation.
However, as Culture Action Europe’s 2024 State of Culture Report shows, the picture is not as positive as these indicators suggest. Across the continent, publicly funded cultural institutions have faced mounting political interference—directors dismissed in Poland, foreign museum leaders excluded in Italy, resignations at Germany’s documenta16. These interventions have bred distrust, pushing some artists towards private or alternative spaces.
Yet independent cultural actors are also under pressure. Reset!’s Atlas of Independent Culture and Media (2024) highlights how war, authoritarian politics, censorship, and corporate consolidation threaten independent scenes, and calls for a European Observatory to monitor ownership and concentration in the cultural and media sectors.
Violations of artistic freedom often remain hidden. Unlike press freedom, which benefits from strong reporting structures, artistic freedom lacks systematic monitoring. As Sara Whyatt and Ole Reitov note in The Fragile Triangle of Artistic Freedom (2024), “under-the-radar” restrictions—blacklisting or cancel culture, pressure on institutions, or blocked access to funding—can be as harmful as open censorship. These dynamics, compounded by algorithm-driven polarisation, fragment public life, turning debates on migration, gender, or minority rights into symbolic cultural battles that fuel self-censorship, now one of the most pervasive obstacles in Europe.
In the Netherlands, the current and maybe future right-wing majority and coalition threaten cultural life through budget cuts, even if hidden in tax measures, and reduced support for international collaboration. These fuel concerns about future constraints on artistic expression through political and economic channels. Broader societal conditions compound the fragility of artistic freedom. Shrinking resources, climate crises, geopolitical conflict, and emergency policy-making have all narrowed space for cultural expression.
CAE’s State of Culture Barometer shows that while more than 80% of artists report being able to express themselves freely, majorities also say funding regimes restrict creativity, cultural policy-making is closed, and living from the arts is unsustainable. These structural conditions, though less visible than direct censorship, are decisive in shaping who can create and participate in cultural life. In Europe today, the defence of artistic freedom is both about resisting overt repression and about confronting the subtle, structural forces that quietly determine its limits.
Main Players
When mapping the institutional actors that shape artistic freedom in Europe, it is important to distinguish their roles. National governments hold primary responsibility through legislation, funding, and governance of cultural institutions. The European Union advances the agenda mainly via cultural policy, funding instruments, and political monitoring, though often in a fragmented manner. By contrast, the Council of Europe provides the human rights backbone: it enshrines artistic freedom within Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, sets normative standards through its cultural committees, and, crucially, offers legal recourse via the European Court of Human Rights when national protections fail. Meanwhile, civil society organisations act as watchdogs and advocates, documenting violations and pushing for reforms.
Yet this division of tasks also exposes serious gaps. The Council of Europe sets binding standards but has limited enforcement capacity beyond court judgments. The EU wields funding and political influence but lacks a systematic monitoring tool or a binding framework dedicated to artistic freedom. National governments are inconsistent—sometimes defending cultural rights, sometimes undermining them. Civil society fills crucial gaps in reporting and advocacy but remains fragile, underfunded, and unevenly distributed. As a result, artistic freedom too often slips between the cracks: not fully captured by EU monitoring, unevenly protected at the national level, and dependent on the precarious capacity of civil society to keep violations visible.
Let’s take a closer look at some main players and then see why embedding artistic freedom into the EU’s Rule of Law Report—supported by a dedicated monitoring mechanism—might be a decisive step in closing those gaps.
The European Union
A telling contrast emerges when comparing how the EU addresses artistic freedom with how it monitors media freedom. For media, there are well-developed instruments: the Media Pluralism Monitor (co-funded by the EU) acts as a research-based “thermometer,” mapping risks annually across member states, while the new European Media Freedom Act provides the legally binding “medicine,” protecting editorial independence, ownership transparency, and public service media. Together, they form a diagnostic-and-response framework.
Artistic freedom, by comparison, remains fragmented and indirect. While the EU’s Work Plan for Culture acknowledges its importance and the Rule of Law Report occasionally flags political interference, there is no equivalent systematic monitoring or binding regulation. Protection still relies on voluntary action, cultural funding (Creative Europe), and civil societies ´watchdog´ role with initiatives like Freemuse. This unevenness leaves artistic freedom more vulnerable to “under-the-radar” threats—political pressure, economic precarity, and self-censorship—that often go undocumented at the European level. Just as media freedom now benefits from both a thermometer and medicine, artistic freedom, too, would need a dedicated monitoring tool and regulatory framework to be fully safeguarded in the EU.
With Glenn Micallef, the EU now has a Commissioner for Culture who explicitly frames artistic freedom as a structural pillar of European democracy. His forthcoming Culture Compass—a strategic framework to be launched in late 2025 or early 2026 and for which Culture Action Europe provides a Sector Blueprint—promises to align EU policy and funding around fair working conditions, access, sustainability, and the protection of cultural expression, a.o.. Beyond this Compass, Micallef has pledged a legislative gap analysis, annual thematic workshops with member states, and even emphasised an ambition for a Freedom of Artistic Expression Report, in analogy and complementary to the Rule of Law Report.
The Council of Europe
The Council of Europe, often confused with the EU, plays a distinct and complementary role when it comes to artistic freedom across the continent. Unlike the EU, whose approach relies largely on cultural policy and funding, the Council of Europe provides the human rights foundation. Through Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights, it establishes artistic freedom as a legally protected right and offers individuals legal recourse when national protections fail. Beyond jurisprudence, the Council of Europe sets normative standards through its Parliamentary Assembly and cultural committees, issuing recommendations and resolutions that guide member states in shaping laws and policies. Its Commissioner for Human Rights can spotlight violations, while its cultural cooperation programmes build capacity and promote best practice. Though it lacks enforcement tools comparable to the EU’s regulatory powers, the Council of Europe’s strength lies in embedding artistic freedom in the wider framework of human rights, providing standards, visibility, and legal remedies that national institutions and civil society can invoke.
Civil Society
At a conference in Bratislava in May 2025, cultural professionals, grassroots initiatives, and advocacy networks including Culture Action Europe issued the Bratislava Declaration on Artistic Freedom. The declaration sounds a clear alarm: rising authoritarianism, censorship, and political control are dismantling cultural autonomy across EU member states. It calls for a robust legal framework—specifically, a European Artistic Freedom Act—to protect artists, cultural institutions, and creative expression from undue interference. The declaration demands transparent funding processes versus politically motivated selection, safeguards for marginalised creators, fair working conditions across the cultural sector, and recognition of artistic freedom as a democratic imperative.
What began as a civil society working group announced in Bratislava has since evolved into a formal Steering Group on the Draft EU Artistic Freedom Act, bringing together Resistance Now Together, Culture Action Europe, and the Artistic Freedom Initiative, supported by independent experts. This coalition is now advocating for a European legal framework to protect artistic freedom.
For years, Culture Action Europe has worked to place artistic freedom at the heart of European cultural policy. From securing its recognition in the EU Work Plan for Culture to documenting its fragility in the 2024 State of Culture Report, CAE has consistently argued that artistic freedom is not a marginal issue but a cornerstone of democracy. A central strand of this advocacy has been the call to embed artistic freedom in the EU’s annual Rule of Law Report, on the same footing as media freedom and judicial independence. The current push for an EU Artistic Freedom Act builds directly on this trajectory: moving beyond awareness-raising and monitoring to propose a binding legal framework. Crucially, these two initiatives are not alternatives but complements: the Rule of Law Report would provide the ongoing monitoring, while an Artistic Freedom Act could create the safeguards to act on what is observed. Taken together, they would allow Europe not only to see the risks, but also to respond to them — a powerful step forward in making artistic freedom a genuine pillar of European democracy.
And the National Level?
Artistic freedom is a European debate that matters locally. So what can be done from the Dutch perspective? By pressing MEPs and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science to back the inclusion of artistic freedom in the EU’s Rule of Law Report and to support a future EU Artistic Freedom Act, we can help make this a European priority. Cultural organisations, museums, theatres, and associations in the Netherlands can use this momentum, join European networks, and show that defending artistic freedom is part of safeguarding democracy at home. And don’t forget to ´support your local dealer´: in The Netherlands, the Europaplatform, the Dutch Hub of Culture Action Europe coordinated by Kunsten92, connects national advocacy with the wider European movement. Reach out to them and engage!
Time for Action
What emerges from this picture is the urgent need for a new cultural contract between civil society and lawmakers. Artistic freedom is too central to Europe’s democratic fabric to be left vulnerable to political interference, economic precarity, or institutional fragmentation. The fact that the EU recognises its value, for instance through the Work Plan for Culture and now Commissioner Micallef’s Culture Compass, is encouraging. But recognition alone is not enough. Europe needs structures that both monitor risks and provide remedies.
Embedding artistic freedom into the Rule of Law Report would create the necessary transparency, making violations visible on an annual basis. A future EU Artistic Freedom Act could then provide the safeguards and accountability mechanisms to act on these findings. These are not competing ideas but complementary steps: one measures, the other protects. At the same time, the Council of Europe continues to offer the human rights anchor, while civil society initiatives keep violations on the radar and propose solutions.
Taken together, these efforts outline a path forward. If Europe succeeds in combining monitoring, regulation, and civil society vigilance, artistic freedom can shift from being a fragile promise to becoming a reliable benchmark of democratic resilience.
Ultimately, freedom of artistic expression is not an abstract principle but something that touches both the artist and the citizen. For the artist, it is the ability to create without fear of censorship, state pressure, or economic retaliation — to tell uncomfortable truths, to experiment, to provoke, to move. For the citizen, it is the right to encounter these works: to experience art that challenges, questions, or inspires, to be confronted with different perspectives, or to feel seen in stories that might otherwise remain untold. In these moments, the freedom of the artist and the freedom of the citizen intersect. One cannot exist without the other. And in a volatile world of polarisation, disinformation, and shrinking civic space, this shared freedom is what keeps societies open, diverse, and democratic. Safeguarding artistic freedom, therefore, means safeguarding the right of all of us — artists and citizens alike — to imagine, question, and create the futures we want to live in.
Image Credit: Stacy