UK will miss out on EU cultural funding boost to aid Covid recovery

The European Union has agreed to bolster its financial provision for culture by a third more than planned over the next seven years to help its member states rebuild and support their arts sectors following Covid-19.

Creative Europe, to which the UK will lose access from January, is one of 10 EU programmes given an uplift in funding alongside the EU’s final financial budget for 2021 to 2027.

It will mean an increase of €600 million (£536 million) – compared with the amount proposed in July’s draft budget – taking the total allocation for Creative Europe to €2.2 billion (£1.97 billion).

Creative Europe’s 2021-27 funding will be about 50% larger than its 2014-20 budget.

Any EU member state is eligible to apply for the programme, although participation is not restricted just to those in the EU, with non-EU countries including Iceland, Norway and Serbia taking part.

The UK government said earlier this year that it would not be seeking continued participation in the scheme, as a non-EU member, post-Brexit.

The move drew criticism from hundreds of arts figures, who, in March, jointly warned that British creativity faced “an impoverished future” without Creative Europe. More than 370 UK-based cultural organisations received nearly £80 million from the programme between 2014 and 2018.

The newly confirmed increase in funding, announced as part of the €1.8 trillion EU budget, followed pressure from the European cultural community, which called for more financial support for culture as the sector emerges from the pandemic.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said of the package: “Help is needed for citizens and business badly hit by the coronavirus crisis. Our recovery plan will help us turn the challenge of the pandemic into an opportunity for a recovery led by the green and digital transition.”

The budget is currently undergoing a 21-day negotiation period with national parliaments and will be formally adopted by the European parliament and ratified next month.