A Culture Compass for Europe – Our Contribution

The European Commissioner for for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture and Sport Glenn Micallef will use the summer of 2025 to draft the Culture Compass which will serve as a strategic framework for EU cultural policy. The Culture Compass aims to improve the consistency of EU policies and strengthen coordination between funding and policy. As most of you will know the Commissioner opened a consultation round for cultural stakeholders, ending on May 29 2025.

As one of the three founding partners of the Cultural Deal for Europe campaign we have repeatedly argued that the Culture Compass for Europe must be more than an agenda, a roadmap, or a strategy. It must unfold an ambitious vision for Europe to which citizens can relate to, providing hope, inspiration and direction. Such a vision must embody Europe’s key principles of democracy, solidarity, sustainability and diversity.

Please, find ECF’s contribution to the consultation round in the document below.

We can hardly overestimate the importance of the forthcoming Culture Compass.  A recent Eurobarometer confirmed what many, including us, have long stressed: we need culture to bring Europeans together.

It echoes in the answer our Head of Public Policy Isabelle Schwarz gave when asked about her hopes for the Culture Compass in an interview for Creatives Unite: “That it becomes a game-changer. Not a technical policy document, but a political vision for how we live together. A Europe that understands culture as its heartbeat, its connective tissue. A Europe that invests in its soul. Because in the end, culture is not just what we do—it’s who we are.”