European Culture: Brussels Knows How to Count Expenses, but Not Their Impact
Never before has the European Union provided such substantial funding to the cultural and audiovisual sectors. Nor has it ever produced so many dashboards, indicators, and evaluation reports. Yet, measuring the actual effectiveness of these policies remains a surprisingly uncertain endeavor.
With just a few days to go before the opening of the Cannes Film Festival, and as the European Parliament begins to examine the future budget architecture AgoraEU set to succeed Creative Europe after 2027, one question is becoming increasingly central in Brussels as well as within the cultural industries: do we really know how European funding for culture is distributed, and can we assess its effectiveness?
A Major Issue
The issue extends far beyond mere budgetary debates. Creative Europe, the European Union’s main support program for the cultural and audiovisual sectors, currently represents 2.5 billion euros in spending for the 2021–2027 period. Creative Europe does not operate solely through calls for proposals: the program combines grants, public procurement, and financial instruments designed to facilitate investment and access to credit in the cultural and audiovisual sectors, notably through national intermediaries such as the IFCIC in France. With the arrival of AgoraEU—which will now also incorporate policies related to media and the press—cultural actors will have to defend their funding. Demonstrating the concrete effectiveness of European spending beyond broad principles regarding cultural diversity or the European exception is therefore…
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