Europe wants culture. But does the cultural sector understand its own value?
On European cultural policy, artistic exceptionalism and the responsibilities of a sector demanding recognition
Europe has become increasingly comfortable acknowledging the importance of culture. It celebrates artistic freedom, cultural diversity, creative expression and the contribution of the arts to democratic life. Culture appears in declarations, strategic frameworks and institutional speeches as an essential component of European identity and social cohesion. Yet when political commitments must be translated into financial decisions, the enthusiasm becomes considerably less consistent. The resulting contradiction is familiar to anyone working in the cultural sector: Europe repeatedly affirms the value of culture while struggling to establish the economic conditions necessary to sustain it.
The latest negotiations surrounding the European Union's budget offer another illustration. In October 2026, more than 200 cultural organisations joined an appeal coordinated by Culture Action Europe opposing the Council's proposed €31.6 million reduction in commitment appropriations for Creative Europe in 2027. The proposed cuts would affect the Culture, MEDIA and cross-sectoral strands, despite the European institutions having signed the Joint Declaration Europe for Culture – Culture for Europe only months earlier. Meanwhile, negotiations over the 2028–2034 Multiannual Financial Framework are placing increasing emphasis on competitiveness, security, technological development and strategic autonomy. Culture remains present in the proposed architecture, notably through AgoraEU, but its place within Europe's wider economic priorities continues to provoke debate.
The cultural sector's response has been predictable, and in many respects justified. Organisations have called for stronger financial commitments, greater recognition of culture's intrinsic value, fairer remuneration for artists and more effective protection of artistic freedom. These demands deserve serious consideration. Cultural production generates public value that cannot always be captured through market transactions, and a society that funds only what produces an immediate economic return risks impoverishing its intellectual, artistic and democratic life.
Nevertheless, there is an uncomfortable question that rarely receives the same attention as the demand for increased public investment. If the cultural sector expects European institutions to recognise its value, to what extent does it understand, organise and recognise that value within its own professional structures? More provocatively, could some of the attitudes and practices normalised within the sector contribute to weakening its economic credibility, institutional capacity and ability to negotiate its place in Europe's future?
Asking this question does not mean blaming artists for political decisions made by governments. Nor does it imply that cultural funding should depend on the profitability of artistic production. It means acknowledging that a sector can be justified in demanding greater public support while simultaneously bearing responsibility for examining the contradictions within its own professional culture. The legitimacy of a demand does not exempt those making it from scrutiny.
The limits of a culture of advocacy
Culture Action Europe has become an important voice in European cultural advocacy. Its work extends beyond public statements: it analyses European funding mechanisms, mobilises cultural organisations, develops policy proposals and encourages participation in national and European decision-making processes. Its campaign concerning the proposed National and Regional Partnership Plans, for instance, recognises that cultural investment cannot be secured exclusively through Brussels-based programmes. Member States will play a central role in determining how substantial parts of the next European budget are allocated, and cultural organisations will need to engage with national governments, build coalitions and translate their priorities into credible investment proposals.
This is meaningful institutional work. It would be inaccurate to suggest that European cultural advocacy consists simply of asking for more money. Yet the language through which the sector represents itself still deserves examination. Campaigns organised around the recognition, remuneration and autonomy of artists often place the artist at the symbolic centre of cultural policy. That emphasis is understandable, especially in a context of widespread precariousness. But it can also reinforce a conception of cultural work in which the creator becomes the principal bearer of value, while the organisational, administrative, financial and intellectual labour required to sustain artistic activity remains less visible.
There is a difference between defending artistic freedom and constructing an ideology of artistic exceptionalism. The first is essential to a democratic society. The second can become a convenient way of avoiding ordinary professional responsibilities. When the cultural sector asks institutions to trust the artist, it should also be willing to ask what that trust entails. Trust cannot mean an absence of accountability, just as autonomy cannot mean exemption from contractual obligations, financial discipline or respect for the professionals on whom artistic projects depend.
The question becomes particularly relevant when cultural advocacy moves from defending rights to demanding a strategic position within European policymaking. Public institutions are not simply distributors of recognition. They allocate limited resources among competing priorities, assess implementation capacity, negotiate political objectives and assume responsibility for the consequences of their decisions. A sector seeking a stronger place in those processes must be capable not only of articulating its needs, but also of demonstrating how its institutions operate, how its resources are distributed and what structural changes would make additional investment effective.
The cultural sector is entitled to challenge the assumptions underlying European economic policy. It should not, however, assume that the moral importance of artistic creation automatically resolves every question concerning the financing and organisation of cultural activity.
When vocation becomes entitlement
One of the most persistent ambiguities in artistic life concerns the relationship between vocation and profession. Artistic vocations frequently demand extraordinary commitment. Musicians may spend decades developing their abilities, organising their lives around demanding practice routines and accepting considerable uncertainty about their future. Composers, performers and other creators often experience their work not merely as an occupation but as an essential dimension of their identity. This depth of commitment deserves recognition.
Yet the intensity of a personal vocation does not automatically establish a claim over other people's time, labour or resources. The fact that music is central to a musician's existence does not mean that everyone involved in the musician's career must organise their own existence around it. A producer, manager, administrator or promoter may respect an artist's ambitions without being personally responsible for fulfilling them. The inability to secure a performance, commission or opportunity may be disappointing, but disappointment does not create an obligation for someone else to overcome every obstacle.
This distinction can become blurred in professional environments where artistic dedication is romanticised to the point of being treated as a form of moral superiority. In such environments, frustration may be expressed not simply as a response to difficult circumstances but as an accusation against those perceived to have failed the artist. The manager who cannot secure a concert becomes insufficiently committed; the producer who identifies financial limitations becomes an obstacle to creativity; the administrator who insists on contractual boundaries appears insensitive to artistic needs. Ordinary professional constraints are interpreted as failures of personal loyalty.
There is something profoundly counterproductive about this conception of artistic work. It encourages dependence while resisting the responsibilities that accompany professional autonomy. It can also create an atmosphere in which emotional intensity is mistaken for the legitimacy of a demand. An artist's disappointment may be entirely genuine without making another professional responsible for resolving it.
This is not a universal description of musicians or artists. Many demonstrate exceptional discipline, generosity, organisational intelligence and respect for their collaborators. Nor should we confuse structural precarity with individual immaturity. Artists often face circumstances over which they have little control, including unstable funding, weak bargaining power and limited employment protections. Nevertheless, these realities do not make every professional behaviour defensible. Economic vulnerability and professional responsibility can coexist, and recognising the former should not require abandoning the latter.
Indeed, a cultural sector that presents artists primarily as vulnerable figures awaiting recognition risks diminishing the very agency it seeks to defend. The artist becomes someone to be protected, trusted and financed, but not necessarily someone expected to negotiate, plan, understand costs, manage commitments or participate responsibly in the economic structures surrounding their work. What begins as a defence of artistic dignity can inadvertently contribute to professional infantilisation.
The invisible hierarchy of cultural labour
The consequences of artistic exceptionalism become particularly apparent in the way cultural projects assign value to different forms of work. Consider the preparation of a new musical production. The artistic contribution may include composition or performance, but the project also requires budgeting, fundraising, contracting, production planning, institutional negotiation, coordination, communication, accounting and compliance with legal and administrative requirements. These activities involve different kinds of expertise, and their complexity varies considerably from one project to another.
Nevertheless, some cultural environments operate according to an implicit hierarchy in which artistic creation is assumed to possess greater professional value than the activities that make it possible. This assumption can influence remuneration even before the actual workload, responsibilities or risks have been assessed. A composition fee may be regarded as necessarily more important than a management fee, not because of a transparent economic calculation, but because the artistic contribution is considered inherently superior.
There is no reason why artistic and managerial fees should always be equal. Their appropriate levels depend on the nature of the work, the experience required, the time invested, the responsibilities assumed and the circumstances of the project. The problem arises when those criteria are displaced by a symbolic hierarchy that treats one form of expertise as noble and another as merely instrumental.
Such distinctions reveal a misunderstanding of value itself. Artistic creation and professional management are not interchangeable activities, but neither can be adequately evaluated through the supposed human or intellectual superiority of the person performing it. A composer does not become more deserving of remuneration because composition is culturally prestigious, just as a manager does not become less deserving because their contribution is less visible to an audience. Both must be evaluated in relation to the work they actually undertake.
This hierarchy also affects how cultural professionals are perceived. Managers may be expected to understand artistic programmes, identify appropriate opportunities, assess institutional contexts and communicate the significance of a project, while simultaneously being treated as though their artistic judgment were irrelevant. Their knowledge is welcomed when it produces practical results but disregarded when it might establish them as intellectual interlocutors.
The contradiction becomes particularly evident when a professional possesses both artistic and managerial expertise. A musician working in representation may deliberately refrain from commenting on another artist's interpretative choices, not because they lack musical judgment, but because they recognise the boundaries of their professional role. Respecting artistic autonomy is a conscious decision about responsibility, not an admission of intellectual inferiority.
The failure to understand that distinction reflects a broader confusion between autonomy and hierarchy. An artist has the right to make their own creative decisions. That right does not establish their superiority over the people who work with them, nor does it entitle them to determine the intellectual worth of those professionals. Artistic freedom protects the independence of creative judgment; it does not require the subordination of everyone else's.
The exploitation we prefer not to recognise
The cultural sector has developed an increasingly sophisticated vocabulary for describing exploitation. It rightly identifies unpaid labour, precarious contracts, unequal bargaining power, inadequate remuneration and the pressures generated by commercial intermediaries. Yet the discussion can become selective when those same practices emerge within relationships organised around artistic creation.
A professional may be expected to work beyond agreed hours because a project is artistically important, to absorb unexpected responsibilities because funding is insufficient, or to provide additional expertise without remuneration because the artist's career depends on it. These expectations are sometimes framed as solidarity, commitment or belief in the project. But when they are systematically imposed rather than freely negotiated, they reproduce precisely the imbalance that cultural advocacy seeks to challenge.
The language of passion is especially useful in concealing such arrangements. Artistic work is often described as something that cannot be measured in ordinary economic terms. That observation may be appropriate when discussing the meaning of an artwork, but it becomes problematic when extended to the labour conditions of everyone involved in producing it. The fact that a project has artistic significance does not eliminate the costs of administering it. Nor does a collaborator's genuine interest in the arts make their professional time freely available.
This is where the sector's internal contradictions become difficult to ignore. It is possible to demand fair remuneration for artists while underpaying the professionals who manage their careers. It is possible to denounce exploitative institutions while reproducing unreasonable expectations within one's own projects. It is possible to defend artistic autonomy while showing little respect for the autonomy of collaborators.
These contradictions do not belong exclusively to artists. Cultural organisations, producers, managers, festivals and public institutions can all reproduce exploitative practices. Some managers exercise disproportionate control over artists, withhold information or exploit their weaker negotiating position. Some organisations invoke cultural missions to justify employment conditions they would consider unacceptable elsewhere. The point is not to reverse the familiar narrative and identify artists as the true exploiters. It is to reject a simplistic division of the cultural economy into morally virtuous creators and inherently suspect intermediaries.
If fair working conditions are a genuine principle rather than a rhetorical instrument, they must apply throughout the cultural value chain.
How professional relationships become transactions
There is another consequence of these internal hierarchies that deserves attention: the possibility that the instrumentalisation of managers by artists contributes to the very commercialisation of artistic relationships that many musicians resent.
The conventional critique of cultural capitalism often describes managers, agents and intermediaries as actors who reduce artistic creation to a product. In this account, the artist represents the intrinsic value of culture, while the intermediary introduces the logic of markets, commissions, negotiations and commercial returns. There are circumstances in which this criticism is justified. Some forms of representation prioritise financial performance over artistic development, and unequal contractual relationships can undermine creative independence.
But the relationship can also deteriorate in the opposite direction. When an artist regards a manager primarily as an instrument for securing concerts, funding, visibility or institutional access, without recognising that professional as an autonomous person with expertise, judgment and legitimate interests, the relationship is already being reduced to a transaction. The manager's contribution becomes valuable only insofar as it satisfies the artist's expectations.
Over time, such dynamics may encourage a defensive response. A professional who repeatedly encounters unrealistic demands, emotional pressure or disregard for contractual boundaries may withdraw the personal investment that initially characterised their work. They may begin to define the relationship exclusively through fees, commissions, deliverables and measurable results. What once involved shared artistic interest and mutual trust becomes an arrangement governed primarily by economic calculation.
This is not an inevitable outcome, nor does it justify exploitative management. It is a possible mechanism through which the absence of reciprocal recognition can erode professional relationships. The commercialisation of cultural work is shaped by institutions, markets and broader economic structures, but interpersonal practices can also influence how those structures are experienced and reproduced.
The paradox is significant. A conception of artistic exceptionalism that seeks to protect creation from economic instrumentalisation may contribute to making the professionals surrounding that creation more transactional. By treating management as a service rather than a form of expertise deserving recognition, artists can help produce the very distance between artistic and economic interests that they subsequently lament.
The alternative is not to dissolve the distinction between artistic and managerial responsibilities. On the contrary, clearly defined responsibilities can make collaboration more respectful. A manager need not become a personal devotee of the artist, and an artist need not surrender creative control to a manager. What both require is recognition that the other possesses professional autonomy, legitimate boundaries and forms of knowledge that cannot be reduced to their immediate usefulness.
Professionalisation is not the enemy of artistic freedom
One reason these questions remain difficult to discuss is that professionalisation is sometimes treated with suspicion in artistic environments. The vocabulary of business planning, economic sustainability, accountability, management and performance can appear incompatible with the freedom associated with creative work. There is a legitimate concern behind that suspicion: cultural policy should not reduce artistic value to profitability, audience numbers or short-term economic returns.
However, rejecting the commercial reduction of art is not the same as rejecting professional responsibility. A cultural organisation can defend experimental work while maintaining rigorous accounts. A composer can resist market expectations while respecting production budgets. A performer can prioritise artistic integrity while fulfilling contractual commitments. A manager can understand the intrinsic value of a project without agreeing to provide unlimited unpaid labour.
Indeed, effective professional structures may be among the strongest protections available to artistic autonomy. Clear agreements reduce arbitrary demands. Sustainable budgets limit dependence on personal sacrifice. Competent administration makes organisations less vulnerable to institutional uncertainty. Transparent remuneration establishes the conditions under which different professionals can collaborate without relying on unspoken hierarchies of prestige.
The distinction between professionalisation and commercialisation is therefore essential. Professionalisation concerns the quality, competence and responsibility with which work is organised. Commercialisation concerns the extent to which market exchange and financial incentives determine its objectives. The two can overlap, but they are not synonymous. A professionally managed cultural institution may deliberately support work with no prospect of commercial profitability, while a poorly managed artistic project may reproduce exploitative economic relationships despite its declared opposition to market logic.
A sector that fails to distinguish these concepts risks defending artistic freedom through practices that undermine the material conditions necessary to exercise it.
What does Europe actually need from the cultural sector?
These internal questions acquire a different significance when placed alongside the European Union's evolving strategic priorities. The proposed 2028–2034 budget reflects a political environment increasingly concerned with competitiveness, security, technological capacity, resilience and the Union's ability to respond to geopolitical uncertainty. Cultural policy must operate within that environment, whether or not cultural organisations agree with the relative importance assigned to those objectives.
The European Commission's proposal for AgoraEU illustrates the complexity of the situation. The programme would bring together support for culture, audiovisual and media sectors, democratic participation, rights and civil society. It is designed to strengthen cultural diversity and artistic freedom while also addressing competitiveness and social resilience. Its proposed financial envelope of approximately €8.6 billion is not a dedicated cultural budget, and the programme's final architecture remains subject to negotiation.
Meanwhile, the proposed National and Regional Partnership Plans would place substantial investment decisions in the hands of Member States. Culture Action Europe has advocated allocating at least 2% of the plans' general allocations to culture, arguing that this could mobilise investment on a scale far beyond programmes dedicated specifically to cultural activity. Such proposals recognise that the sector must engage with the economic and administrative structures through which European priorities are implemented.
But participation in those structures requires more than identifying a percentage of available funding. Cultural actors must be able to explain what problems they intend to solve, what capacities they need to develop, how projects will be implemented, which professional groups will benefit and what responsibilities organisations will assume. They must also be prepared to confront uncomfortable questions about their own operating models.
For example, if European funding is intended to improve the sustainability of cultural employment, how will organisations ensure that management, production and administrative labour are remunerated fairly alongside artistic work? If investment aims to strengthen the competitiveness of cultural and creative sectors, what professional capabilities are currently missing, and how should they be developed? If public support is justified through the contribution of culture to democratic life, how are transparency, accountability and respect for professional autonomy practised within cultural institutions themselves?
These questions are not arguments for making artistic creation subordinate to European competitiveness policy. Culture should retain the capacity to criticise political and economic priorities, including those of the institutions that finance it. The intrinsic value of art cannot be reduced to its usefulness in delivering strategic objectives. But independence from instrumental political demands does not require indifference to the organisational conditions under which cultural work takes place.
There is also an important limit to the argument. We cannot conclude that the Council's proposed reductions to Creative Europe result from professional immaturity within the cultural sector. Budget negotiations are shaped by political bargaining, fiscal constraints, competing policy priorities and institutional power. The behaviour of individual artists does not explain decisions taken by European governments. Nor is there sufficient evidence to establish that internal professional weaknesses are a principal cause of culture's relative position within the EU budget.
What can reasonably be argued is that organisational capacity, professional credibility and internal coherence matter to a sector's ability to participate effectively in policymaking. They affect how cultural actors formulate proposals, manage resources, build alliances and engage with institutions. Their significance deserves examination alongside the more familiar debate over the amount of public funding available.
Beyond the demand for recognition
The debate over European cultural funding is often framed as a question of whether political institutions sufficiently appreciate the arts. There is considerable evidence that cultural ambitions and budgetary decisions do not always align, and the sector is justified in scrutinising that inconsistency. Yet a political conversation centred exclusively on recognition can obscure another problem: the difference between understanding that culture has value and understanding how that value is created, sustained and distributed.
Artistic value is not produced by the artist alone, even when the artwork originates in an individual creative vision. It exists within an ecosystem of training, institutions, technical expertise, production, management, public participation and accumulated cultural knowledge. Recognising that ecosystem does not diminish the artist's contribution. It makes the conditions of artistic creation more intelligible.
A mature cultural sector would be capable of defending the exceptional nature of artistic expression without demanding exceptional privileges for the people who produce it. It would recognise that a vocation does not absolve anyone of professional obligations, that creative autonomy does not imply intellectual superiority and that respect for artistic work cannot depend on the devaluation of other forms of labour. It would also understand that economic responsibility is not necessarily an ideological concession to capitalism, but a condition for ensuring that artistic freedom does not depend on the unpaid sacrifices of others.
Such maturity would require cultural organisations and artists to examine not only the external pressures they face but also the internal practices they reproduce. It would require advocacy organisations to complement demands for investment with serious reflection on governance, professional relationships, remuneration and the distribution of responsibility. And it would require managers and producers to accept their own obligations of transparency, competence and ethical conduct rather than presenting themselves merely as victims of artistic expectations.
None of this weakens the argument for public cultural investment. On the contrary, it can make that argument more coherent. A sector that understands the full range of labour and expertise necessary to sustain cultural production is better equipped to explain why its activities require investment, what that investment should support and how public resources can be used responsibly without compromising artistic independence.
Europe's cultural ambitions should be judged against its financial commitments. But the cultural sector should also be willing to judge its own professional practices against the principles it asks Europe to uphold.
The central contradiction is not simply that Europe claims to value culture while hesitating to pay for it. It is that parts of the cultural sector demand recognition, fairness and respect from institutions while struggling to extend those same principles consistently to the people working within their own structures.
The two problems are not equivalent, and one does not excuse the other. European governments remain responsible for their political choices, just as cultural professionals remain responsible for their conduct. Acknowledging both responsibilities is not a retreat from cultural advocacy. It is a more demanding conception of it.
Perhaps the next stage of the European cultural debate should therefore begin with a question that is less comfortable than another appeal for recognition: if we want Europe to understand the value of culture, are we prepared to examine how well we understand, respect and sustain that value ourselves?
References
European Commission, EU budget 2028–2034 and the proposed AgoraEU programme, July 2025.
Culture Action Europe, Culture in National & Regional Partnership Plans (NRPPs), 9 September 2026.
Culture Action Europe, 200+ cultural organisations oppose proposed cuts to Creative Europe, 6 October 2026.
European Union, Europe for Culture – Culture for Europe, Joint Declaration, June 2026.
European Economic and Social Committee, opinion concerning the proposed AgoraEU programme and the 2028–2034 Multiannual Financial Framework, 2026.
