2023 kicks off the mid-term review of the EU’s Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), the bloc’s seven-year budget. Looking at the new cycle for Creative Europe, the EU’s only dedicated programme to cultural cooperation, the substantial increase of the financial envelope by more than 50% is a central development compared to the past, which must be acknowledged.
However, next to this important improvement, which responded to the steady calls coming from the cultural and the creative sectors, many features of the programme, which were copied from Horizon Europe, still create excessive burdens and prevent the widest participation possible in Creative Europe especially among micro and small organisations, ultimately undermining upholding cultural diversity in Europe. First and foremost, the budget, which still remains too little of an envelope for an overly subscribed programme.
Culture Action Europe, the major European cross-sectoral cultural network, has gathered inputs, reactions, and remarks from its wider membership, in view to contribute to the stakeholders’ consultation organized by the CULT Committee on 13 April 2023.
We call on the European Parliament to integrate these concerns in the upcoming Implementation Report of Creative Europe 2021-2027, as well as to improve the next programme in light of them.
