In the context of the annual budget procedure for 2024, the Council of the EU has proposed to reduce the financial envelope of Creative Europe by 40 million EUR. While having barely any impact on the EU’s budget savings at a time of strained finances, such a cut, however, will significantly weaken the only EU's programme dedicated to crossborder and transnational cultural cooperation, and cause damage to the CCSIs.
Moreover, as you will remember, the Creative Europe budget had been frontloaded during the negotiations in 2020 as a reaction to the needs of the CCSIs coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. The nature of the front-loaded budget is that the annual budgets would start to decrease already as of 2024. Against this backdrop, we believe that imposing further cuts to an already decreasing budget will severely jeopardise the recovery efforts undertaken in the past years up until now.
Culture Action Europe - together with several of its network members - reactivated the informal gathering of 110+ European cultural networks which was key to secure a fair place for culture in the EU's recovery efforts at the time of the negotiations on the Next Generation EU Plan.
The attached letter, prepared by the initiators of this joint action, and which is addressed to the leaders of the European Council, the Council of the EU, the Member States, and the Presidency of the Commission was signed by CEPIC.
cae_Joint Action - Letter CE budget cuts 2024 [endorse by 31.08]