Stand alone programme for Creative Europe secured

May 2, 2018, 8:27 pm

Culture Action Europe reacts to the European Commission’s proposal for a post 2020 EU Budget

The European Commission unveiled its EU budget proposal for the next 7 years, covering the period of 2021-2027.

Culture Action Europe welcomes that the European Commission’s proposal keeps Creative Europe as a self-standing programme, with a budgetary increase from 1.4 billion Euros (2014-2020) to 1.8 billion euros (2021-2027). This is especially welcomed considering both, the financial stress caused by UK’s departure on the EU budget, and the prior suggested merger of Creative Europe with other programmes in the field of citizenship and rights.

Even though we consider the maintenance of the program and the budget increase as an important step, further legal and budgetary details are necessary to understand the distribution of the proposed increase within the strands and objectives of the next Creative Europe. However, we believe this figure is far from sufficient in order to cover the chronic underinvestment of the Creative Europe programme. A double increase of the budget associated to the programme is needed in order to allow the sector to reach its true potential.

The post-2020 budget proposal also acknowledges synergies between culture and a number of policy areas, such as education, the digital domain, economy and investment, research and innovation, and cohesion as called for by Culture Action Europe, its members and other collective voices. These are positive steps towards recognising that culture plays a central role in almost all European policy domains. While awaiting further details that describe the financial allocations, we encourage European Institutions to ensure that at least 1% of each of these policy domains is allocated to culture.   

We call European Member States and the European Parliament to guarantee a substantial and sustainable increase of the budget for culture during the negotiations ahead. We call on our members, partners and friends to support a strengthened budget for culture and actively advocate for it at all levels: national, regional, and European. Culture Action Europe will remain actively committed to this goal by campaigning for stronger support for culture.

Join Culture Action Europe’s 1% for Culture campaign, sign our manifesto to help us accomplish this objective.

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