ELIA Advocates for Long-term EU-investment in Research and Education in the Arts
Thursday 23 October 2025
 On Tuesday 23 September, Executive Director Maria Hansen, and Advocacy Manager Irene Garofalo represented ELIA at the High-Level Roundtable on Culture in the Next EU Budget (MFF 2028-2034). The roundtable was hosted by the European Parliament and consisted of an exchange of views between more than 20 European networks and organisations and key politicians. At ELIA, we took this opportunity to urge the Members of the European Parliament and fellow stakeholders to ensure meaningful and long-term EU funding for education and research in and through the arts. This funding is essential for nurturing innovation, mobility, and sustainability across Europe’s cultural and creative sectors. We believe that the EU budget should contribute to making the arts and creative professions accessible to all. In particular, we stressed that: - Dedicated support for the arts and cultural sectors should be safeguarded through the Creative Europe/AgoraEU programme.
- The transformative, experimental and innovative potential of the arts needs to be recognised and supported in the Horizon Europe programme, including through a dedicated strand under Pillar Two. (On this matter, see also the ARA Collective Response, and Leaping Beyond the Now Recommendations).
- The Erasmus+ programme should be strengthened so it can meet growing demand for mobility and international capacity-building activities.
- Culture needs to be transversally integrated across the EU budget through multiple budget lines. We would welcome a minimum percentage of expenditures from the National and Regional Partnership Plans to be earmarked for culture.
The panel discussion at the event featuring Members of the European Parliament focused mostly on AgoraEU, the follow-up programme to Creative Europe. Some of our key takeaways from the contributions can be read below. Nela Riehl, CULT Committee Chair, stressed how the budget increases to Creative Europe (now AgoraEU) for the period 2028-2034, while positive, were only the bare minimum of what is needed. Preventing any cuts in the proposal in the coming months will be key. She noted the importance of defending cross-border collaboration in culture, and that earmarking in the programme will be needed. Strategy-wise she encouraged stakeholders to connect not only to the CULT Committee but were relevant to the European Parliament’s Budget Committee and, on the topic of research and Horizon Europe, with the ITRE Committee. Hannes Heide, CULT Committee rapporteur on the opinion for a revamped long-term EU budget, argued for an efficient and sufficient EU budget. He seemed relatively optimistic about the AgoraEU programme proposal but stressed that when evaluating the adequacy of budget amounts, inflation must be taken into account. Earmarks in the programme will be needed, as well as vigilance towards the ongoing negotiations on how to achieve the high ambition of the proposal. The Commission's proposal is currently partly based on cuts in some areas, and the development of new own resources. Carla Tavares, member of the Committee on Budgets and co-rapporteur of Parliament’s MFF own-initiative report, explained that this is a crucial moment for the European Parliament as work on their resolution on the budget has started. She stressed the importance of investing in culture at the regional and local level and of increased flexibility for the beneficiaries of EU grants. According to Tavares, it will be crucial in the upcoming negotiations for pro-European groups stick together. Other key topics of conversations included whether the Creative Europe branding should be maintained in the future (both Riehl and Heide were in favour of this), earmarking funds for sub-sector specific grants, and conditionalities of EU grants in the 2028 programmes.
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