The price of European priorities: what the proposed AgoraEU cuts reveal
On 10 October 2026, the Irish Presidency of the Council of the European Union presented a new negotiating box for the 2028–2034 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). Among its proposed adjustments was a reduction in the allocation for AgoraEU, the future programme bringing together support for culture, media and democracy, from the European Commission’s proposed €8.6 billion to €6 billion. This represents a decrease of approximately 30%, considerably greater than the overall reduction of 8% outlined in the same negotiating framework.
The figures are provisional, and the Council’s own document explicitly states that the negotiating box is neither binding on national delegations nor intended to represent a final compromise. Nevertheless, the proposal raises questions that extend beyond the immediate financial consequences for European cultural and creative organisations. It invites us to examine how the European Union defines its strategic priorities, how those priorities are translated into budgetary decisions, and whether the political recognition of culture is accompanied by a corresponding commitment to sustaining it.
Only a few months earlier, in June 2026, the European institutions had advanced the joint declaration Europe for Culture – Culture for Europe, reaffirming the importance of culture for European identity, democratic resilience, economic competitiveness and social cohesion. The declaration recognises cultural and creative sectors as strategic resources, acknowledges the intrinsic value of culture as a public good, and places artistic freedom, cultural diversity and fair working conditions among the principles guiding European cultural policy.
There is nothing inherently contradictory about recognising the strategic importance of a policy area while subjecting its budget to negotiation. Public resources are finite, and European institutions must reconcile competing priorities in an increasingly complex geopolitical and economic environment. The difficulty emerges when the relative scale of proposed reductions appears difficult to reconcile with the strategic significance attributed to the affected programmes. If culture, independent media and civil society are essential components of European democratic resilience, what criteria justify reducing their proposed allocation proportionally more than those of several other major European programmes?
This question deserves examination not simply from the perspective of cultural advocacy, but from that of institutional coherence.
Beyond the immediate figures
The proposed €2.6 billion reduction in AgoraEU would account for approximately 0.13% of the proposed overall MFF, according to calculations published by Culture Action Europe. Viewed from the perspective of the Union’s total expenditure, the saving is relatively limited. Viewed from the perspective of the programme itself, however, it represents almost one-third of the resources initially proposed by the Commission.
This difference in scale is central to understanding the debate. A budgetary adjustment that appears marginal within the broader financial framework can substantially alter the operational capacity of an individual programme. Its effects may extend to the number of projects supported, the geographical reach of European cooperation, the ability of smaller organisations to participate and the continuity of transnational cultural networks.
At the same time, AgoraEU should not be treated as synonymous with Creative Europe. The proposed programme encompasses a wider policy architecture, bringing together cultural and audiovisual support with activities related to democracy, civil society and independent media. Consequently, the proposed reduction cannot automatically be translated into a specific financial loss for cultural organisations alone. Its eventual consequences will depend on the programme’s final allocation, its internal distribution of resources and the legislative arrangements governing its implementation.
That distinction is important. An informed discussion about cultural financing should avoid treating preliminary negotiating figures as definitive outcomes, while remaining attentive to what those figures reveal about the direction of institutional negotiations.
The comparison with other programmes is also revealing. According to the figures communicated by Culture Action Europe, the Irish proposal would reduce Horizon Europe by approximately 10%, the European Competitiveness Fund by 13% and Global Europe by 16%, relative to the Commission’s proposed allocations. AgoraEU would therefore face a substantially larger proportional adjustment. This does not, by itself, establish why the Presidency selected those figures. It does, however, make the underlying criteria for distributing reductions a legitimate subject of public scrutiny.
The evidence Europe already has
One of the most relevant aspects of this debate is that European cultural funding is not an untested policy instrument whose effectiveness remains entirely speculative. In December 2025, the European Commission published A Decade of Creative Europe, evaluating the 2014–2020 programme and the implementation of its 2021–2027 successor.
The report provides a useful perspective on the European added value of cultural cooperation. The current Creative Europe programme was allocated €2.44 billion for 2021–2027, equivalent to approximately 0.2% of the EU budget. Its relatively modest financial scale contrasts with the breadth of activities it supports, particularly in areas where national financing alone cannot adequately address the fragmentation of European cultural markets along linguistic and territorial boundaries.
Between 2021 and 2023, the Culture strand supported 630 projects, directing €294 million towards more than 2,000 organisations across 39 countries. It also facilitated the translation of more than 1,500 books, while Culture Moves Europe provided mobility opportunities to more than 3,800 emerging artists. The Commission further reported that eight out of ten collaborations examined continued after their funded projects had ended.
These figures do not eliminate the need for critical evaluation. Public programmes should be assessed in terms of accessibility, effectiveness, geographical balance, administrative efficiency and their capacity to produce meaningful outcomes. Nor does evidence of past achievements automatically determine the appropriate size of future budgets. Nevertheless, the Commission’s findings demonstrate that European cultural funding responds to identifiable structural needs and has generated measurable results.
The fundamental question, therefore, is not whether cultural expenditure should be exempt from budgetary scrutiny. It is whether the proposed allocation adequately reflects the objectives that European institutions themselves have established, taking into account both the evidence of past performance and the challenges anticipated for the coming decade.
Cultural sovereignty in an increasingly concentrated market
The discussion becomes even more consequential when situated within the transformation of Europe’s audiovisual and digital markets. In January 2026, the European Audiovisual Observatory published Top players in the European AV industry, examining market concentration, ownership and revenue distribution using 2024 figures. Its findings reveal a pronounced difference between traditional audiovisual markets and newer digital services. European players accounted for approximately 75% of revenues in the traditional pay-television and television-advertising markets examined, while non-European players accounted for 89% of revenues in the non-traditional market comprising subscription video-on-demand and online video advertising.
These figures should not be interpreted as evidence that European cultural production has disappeared or that all digital distribution is controlled by a single group of companies. They do, however, illustrate the extent to which European cultural and audiovisual activity increasingly operates within commercial environments shaped by actors headquartered outside Europe. The distinction between producing cultural content and controlling the infrastructures through which that content reaches audiences is becoming increasingly important.
European cultural sovereignty cannot be reduced to questions of national ownership or the geographical origins of individual companies. It also concerns the capacity of European creators, producers and institutions to develop, finance, distribute and circulate their work under conditions that preserve cultural diversity and meaningful artistic independence. In this context, support for transnational cooperation and independent production is not merely a mechanism for subsidising cultural activity. It can contribute to addressing structural disadvantages in markets characterised by concentration, uneven bargaining power and considerable differences in access to audiences.
The European Union has repeatedly associated cultural diversity with its broader ambitions for strategic autonomy and democratic resilience. The challenge is to determine whether the instruments available to pursue those objectives are proportionate to the economic structures they are intended to influence. A reduced AgoraEU allocation would not, on its own, determine the future of European cultural sovereignty. But its proposed scale deserves examination alongside the Union’s declared ambition to strengthen its cultural and creative industries in an increasingly competitive international environment.
AgoraEU is not the whole cultural budget
There is another dimension to the forthcoming financial framework that deserves equal attention: the proposed National and Regional Partnership Plans (NRPPs). Under the Commission’s initial architecture, these plans would consolidate a substantial share of European funding and give Member States considerable responsibility for determining how common priorities are translated into national and regional investments.
Culture Action Europe has drawn attention to the opportunities this structure could create for cultural organisations that do not ordinarily participate in centrally managed European programmes. Its analysis identifies a proposed NRPP envelope of approximately €865 billion, with a general allocation of around €750 billion after excluding certain earmarked components. On that basis, allocating 2% of the general allocation to culture would represent approximately €15 billion over seven years, before accounting for any applicable national co-financing.
This is an illustrative policy objective rather than a legally established allocation. Its significance lies not only in the potential volume of investment, but also in the change of governance it implies. Whereas centrally managed programmes such as Creative Europe have supported international partnerships and activities with a distinctly European dimension, national and regional plans would place considerable emphasis on domestic programming decisions, administrative capacities and national priorities.
That difference raises a fundamental question about the future distribution of cultural opportunities across the Union. Greater national flexibility may allow investments to respond more closely to local needs, including cultural infrastructure, heritage preservation, professional development and regional creative economies. At the same time, without sufficiently clear commitments to cultural participation and transparent consultation, the resulting allocations could vary considerably between Member States.
The experience of the Recovery and Resilience Facility offers a useful precedent. According to Culture Action Europe’s analysis, the Commission reported approximately €11.7 billion in direct support for culture and the cultural and creative sectors across 18 Member States. Yet the distribution was uneven, with a relatively small number of countries accounting for a substantial share of cultural investment. The lesson is not that decentralised funding necessarily disadvantages culture, but that its inclusion cannot be assumed merely because the legal framework permits it.
The relationship between AgoraEU and the NRPPs should therefore be understood as complementary rather than interchangeable. National and regional investment cannot fully substitute for European instruments specifically designed to overcome linguistic and territorial fragmentation, just as centrally managed cooperation programmes cannot address every structural need of local cultural ecosystems. An effective European cultural funding architecture requires both dimensions to function coherently.
This is also why the ongoing debate should not focus exclusively on restoring AgoraEU’s initial proposed allocation. The place of culture within Horizon Europe, the European Competitiveness Fund, Global Europe and the NRPPs will also influence the opportunities available to European cultural and creative professionals after 2027. The question is whether the different instruments will form a sufficiently coherent framework or whether cultural investment will remain dispersed across programmes whose principal objectives lie elsewhere.
Democratic resilience requires more than recognition
The proposed structure of AgoraEU introduces an additional policy consideration. By bringing together culture, media, civil society and democratic participation, the programme reflects an understanding that democratic resilience depends on more than electoral institutions and formal legal protections. Independent journalism, freedom of artistic expression, cultural participation and an active civil society contribute to the conditions in which democratic life can develop.
This relationship has acquired particular relevance amid concerns about disinformation, external influence, digital concentration and the weakening of independent civic spaces. Yet the democratic contribution of culture should not be understood solely in instrumental terms. Artistic expression does not derive its legitimacy from its capacity to deliver predefined political outcomes. Its independence, including the freedom to question institutions and established narratives, is part of what gives it public value.
The joint declaration Europe for Culture – Culture for Europe acknowledges this distinction by recognising both the intrinsic value of culture and its wider societal, civic and economic contributions. It also commits the institutions to protecting artistic freedom and the independence of cultural organisations.
A programme designed to support these objectives must therefore be evaluated through more than its headline budget. Its governance, accessibility, safeguards for institutional independence and capacity to support diverse organisations will be equally relevant. Bringing several policy fields under a common financial framework may create opportunities for cooperation and administrative simplification, but it also makes the internal distribution of resources especially important.
The current negotiations present an opportunity to clarify how the European Union intends to balance these objectives. Financial efficiency is a legitimate concern, but it cannot be assessed independently of the purposes that expenditure is expected to serve. If democratic resilience is understood as a long-term European priority, the institutions must explain how their chosen funding instruments will contribute to sustaining the cultural, journalistic and civic environments on which that resilience partly depends.
The institutional test ahead
The Irish Presidency’s negotiating box is one stage in a process that will continue through negotiations among Member States and with the European Parliament. The document itself reiterates the principle that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. The figures under discussion should therefore be treated as negotiating positions, not as adopted expenditure ceilings.
The European Parliament’s consent will be required for the final MFF regulation, although its role differs from that of the Council, which must reach unanimity. This institutional arrangement makes the negotiations particularly significant: the eventual outcome will reflect not only the distribution of resources among competing policy areas, but also the capacity of European institutions to reconcile their different priorities.
The European Council meeting scheduled for 15–16 October provides an immediate occasion to examine the direction of those discussions. It would be premature to assume that the current AgoraEU allocation will survive unchanged, just as it would be premature to presume that the Commission’s original proposal will ultimately be restored.
What can already be assessed is the distance between the ambitions expressed in European cultural policy documents and the financial scenarios now being considered. That distance does not automatically establish institutional inconsistency: budgets require compromise, and strategic objectives must coexist with fiscal constraints. But the larger the divergence between declared priorities and proposed resources, the stronger the need for transparent justification.
The most productive response to the current negotiations is therefore not to argue that cultural funding should be insulated from competing demands. It is to insist that its allocation be evaluated according to the same standards of strategic relevance, demonstrated effectiveness and long-term public value applied to other European priorities.
What Europe chooses to finance
The debate surrounding AgoraEU is ultimately a debate about the relationship between political ambition and institutional responsibility. European institutions have recognised culture as a public good, a source of economic activity, a foundation of democratic life and a component of the Union’s international position. The Commission’s own evaluations provide evidence that European cultural programmes can address needs that national policies cannot fully meet independently.
None of this determines a single objectively correct budgetary allocation. It does, however, establish a substantive basis on which proposed changes should be examined and explained.
A European Union seeking greater competitiveness, democratic resilience and strategic autonomy must decide how cultural and creative activity fits within those ambitions. That decision will not be expressed only through declarations, strategies or institutional commitments. It will also emerge from the financial architecture of the next MFF, the internal design of AgoraEU and the priorities eventually adopted through national and regional partnership plans.
The central question is not whether Europe values culture. Its institutions have repeatedly affirmed that it does. The question is what financial, administrative and political responsibilities follow from that recognition.
The next European budget will not merely distribute resources. It will reveal how the Union understands the relationship between the priorities it declares and the commitments it is prepared to make.
Sources and documentation
Council of the European Union, Multiannual Financial Framework 2028–2034: Negotiating Box, document 13922/26, 10 October 2026. The official table records €8.582 billion for the Commission’s AgoraEU proposal and €6.007 billion for the Irish negotiating figure, in current prices.
European Parliament, Council and European Commission, Europe for Culture – Culture for Europe, Joint Declaration, Official Journal C/2026/3440, 25 June 2026.
European Commission, A Decade of Creative Europe, COM(2025) 768 final, 17 December 2025.
European Audiovisual Observatory, Laura Ene Iancu, Top players in the European AV industry: 2024 figures, January 2026.
Top players in the European AV industry - 2024 figures (January 2026 - L. Ene)
Culture Action Europe, Culture in National & Regional Partnership Plans, September 2026.
Culture Action Europe, statement opposing the Irish Presidency’s proposed AgoraEU reductions, October 2026, and Future of Europe, the Civitates-funded advocacy initiative involving six civil society organisations.
This article reflects the negotiating position available on 12 October 2026, before the European Council meeting of 15–16 October. It should be updated if subsequent negotiations materially change the proposed figures.
