A Culture Compass for Europe – How Culture Can Lead the Way

The European Cultural Foundation much welcomes the just launched Culture Compass for Europe, the EU’s new strategic vision and framework for culture for which we have been advocating for together with partners from across civil society, including the Cultural Deal for Europe alliance.

The Culture Compass is an important achievement and we congratulate Glenn Micallef, European Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Culture, Youth and Sport and his wider team for setting the right course for culture at EU level. We now call the three EU institutions – European Council, European Parliament and European Commission – to bring the Culture Compass to life by adopting the proposed Draft Joint Declaration “Culture for Europe – Europe for Culture”.

The Culture Compass for Europe offers a vision and measures for an elevated place for culture on EU level which we applaud. It proposes to position culture more centrally in EU thinking and action and linking it to other EU policies. For the strategy to unfold its promise, its needs to be adequately resourced. We therefore call on EU Member States to strengthen the proposed AgoraEU programme in the next EU budget (2028-2034) and allocate at least 2% for culture.

We truly applaud the approach of the European Commission and the visionary lead of Commissioner Glenn Micallef to build on what has already been achieved in EU policies for culture while proposing a stronger and more meaningful role of culture in the European project. Culture is what binds us as individuals and as communities. It nourishes a sense of belonging, the European sentiment. As the latest Eurobarometer on Culture shows 87% of respondents believe that culture and cultural heritage should have a very important place in the Union, so that citizens feel more European.

Many European cultural networks have released a first assessment of the Culture Compass so we won’t repeat what has been published already, but share our first thoughts from the perspective of Europe’s only cultural foundation dedicating all its resources to Europe.

As a European philanthropic actor with more than 70 years of support to culture, we welcome the fact that the Culture Compass recognises the value and leverage capacity of philanthropy, and encourages new collaboration avenues between the public and private sectors, including philanthropy to expand funding sources for culture. We also see a lot of potential in the proposed novel financing approaches, including public-private partnerships, aligned and pooled funding as piloted by SHARE EUROPE powered by ECF and partners.

Yes, Europe needs strategic investment in culture and philanthropy plays a strategic role in strengthening European values on the ground. But in order to devise a truly strategic partnership and investment, philanthropy must be involved from the beginning in co-design and co-develop of innovative funding mechanisms for European purposes. We stand ready to work hand-in-hand with the Commission on guidelines for innovative investment tools of philanthropy for culture, but above all, we hope that the Compass will allow to test real-life solutions in practice.

We also believe the European cultural and creative sectors need a true CULTURE AGORA – a pan-European forum citizens are brought to the conversation. We hope that the proposed EU’s structured dialogue with stakeholders will be genuine, meaningful and will constitute a genuine co-creation exercise. And it won’t be merely a box-ticking exercise, but democracy in practice. The extensive consultation process ahead of the adoption of the Culture Compass, to ECF was proud to contribute, gives us hope.

Our aspirations during the Culture Compass consultations were to unfold an ambitious vision for Europe to which citizens can relate to, providing hope, inspiration and direction, which would embody Europe’s key principles of democracy, solidarity, sustainability and diversity. The Culture Compass is an important step in this direction and as Commissioner Micallef put it so rightly at the launch of the Compass: When Culture wins, Europe wins.