BRAND.BRIEF — Stand Up for the Rights of European CCIs

Executive Summary

Europe is rewriting the rules of who counts as a strategic sector — for the next seven years. Cultural and Creative Industries are about to be left out.

The European Competitiveness Fund (ECF) will become the EU's primary industrial and innovation funding instrument from 2028 to 2034. The Regulation that defines who benefits — which sectors get dedicated budget lines, governance seats, skills support and procurement access — is being negotiated right now. The current draft mentions CCIs in a single sentence across 132 pages. Once the text is locked in trilogue, that exclusion holds for the entire seven-year cycle. There is no second chance until 2034.

What's at stake: billions in research, innovation, scale-up and skills funding that 7.9 million European workers will not be able to access.
Why now: the ECF Regulation, the AI Act implementation, the GPAI Code of Practice and the EU AI Office are being shaped in parallel — and they will define creator income for a decade.
What we ask: name CCIs as a strategic sector in the ECF, give them a dedicated budget line, a creator-rights framework, and a guaranteed seat in governance.

~4%

of EU GDP generated by Cultural & Creative Industries

€524B

net turnover of the cultural sector in the EU business economy (2023)

7.9M

people employed across the sector

2.1M

enterprises — over 99.9% are SMEs

1

single line in 132 pages of the proposed ECF Regulation

The Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) are one of Europe's largest economic ecosystems: in 2023 some 2.1 million cultural enterprises generated around €524 billion in net turnover within the EU business economy, and the sector employs 7.9 million people — a workforce larger than telecommunications and the automotive industry combined, over 99.9% of which are SMEs. They produce the content that gives Europe's digital economy its meaning, its democratic culture, and its global voice.

More than a cultural sector — innovation infrastructure.

CCIs are not only a sector that produces and protects culture — they are a cross-cutting knowledge-valorisation infrastructure that turns research and human insight into products, services and systems across every ECF Policy Window. Artistic research and design are the clearest cases: design methodology is knowledge translation by definition, and the most legible model of what CCIs bring to the FP10 knowledge triangle. This reach is structural — CCIs already work across tourism, sport, healthcare, mobility, digital infrastructure, public services and manufacturing, the very bridge linking a CCI priority to the proposed Policy Windows. Design capability is a measurable predictor of innovation and start-up success: CCIs are the architects of new value propositions, not only cultural workers.

What is the ECF?

The European Competitiveness Fund (ECF) is the EU's proposed flagship industrial and innovation instrument under the next Multi-Annual Financial Framework (MFF), running from 2028 to 2034. It is designed as a single, simplified investment vehicle that consolidates and replaces the patchwork of existing programmes — Horizon Europe (research), Digital Europe, InvestEU, EU4Health, the European Defence Fund, parts of CEF and LIFE and more — into one coherent framework. Funding is organised into a small number of Policy Windows covering Strategic Technologies, Clean Transition, Industry & Single Market, Defence & Space, Health, and the Digital sphere. Inside each window sit the dedicated budget lines, governance bodies and procurement tracks that decide where the money actually flows.

If a sector is not named in a Policy Window, it does not exist for the ECF. No dedicated calls, no representation in the Strategic Stakeholders Board, no weight in the Investment Committee, no consideration in pre-commercial procurement — and, in practice, no path to the multi-billion-euro lines that will define European industrial policy for the next decade.

Why now — the window is closing.

The Commission's ECF proposal is on the table. Parliament and Council are forming their positions, and trilogue negotiations will determine the final structure within months. Once the Regulation is adopted, its architecture — the Policy Windows, the strategic sector list, the governance bodies — is locked in for the full seven-year cycle. Amending it later requires reopening the Multi-Annual Financial Framework itself, which historically does not happen.

At the same moment, the EU AI Office, the General-Purpose AI Code of Practice, and the implementation bodies of the AI Act are taking shape — and shaping the future income of every European writer, musician, illustrator, filmmaker, journalist and game designer whose work is being ingested into AI training systems. The two negotiations are running in parallel, and they will define the rules under which creators participate in — or are displaced from — the AI economy. Decisions taken in the next few months will hold for the next decade.

What CCIs stand to lose.

Without strategic-sector designation in the ECF, Cultural and Creative Industries are pushed into a small cultural silo — principally the Creative Europe programme (~€2.4 billion over seven years) and the AgoraEU democracy programme — while telecommunications, pharma, defence, space, clean tech and digital move into a consolidated framework an order of magnitude larger. Concretely:

No strategic sector designation — so no dedicated calls in the ECF Policy Windows.
No dedicated funding line — losing access to research, scale-up and infrastructure budgets that other strategic sectors receive.
No copyright or creator-remuneration framework — leaving European creators unprotected as their work feeds AI training.
No Article 30 Skills Guarantee — denying CCIs the AI-literacy and re-skilling support given to clean transition, defence, space and digital workers.
No seat in ECF governance — no voice in the Strategic Stakeholders Board, the InvestEU Advisory Board, or the Investment Committee.
No "Make European" content procurement track — so European public service media, audiovisual production and creative innovation lose the procurement preference others enjoy.

The risk is not abstract. The Cultural and Creative Industries are larger than telecommunications or the automotive industry — and the framework that will fund European competitiveness for the next decade currently treats them as a footnote. If this brief is not heard, 7.9 million workers and 2.1 million enterprises will spend the 2028–2034 cycle locked out of the room where the strategic decisions about Europe's industrial and digital future are made. There is no second draft.

// Overarching Demand

Reframe the policy window — and ring-fence a CCI floor.

Demand

We call on the Commission, the European Parliament and national governments to broaden the ‘Digital Leadership’ policy window to include the cultural and creative dimension, reframing it as ‘Digital, Cultural and Creativity Leadership’ — and to ring-fence a defined minimum share of the window’s budget for the Cultural and Creative Industries, commensurate with their 4.4% contribution to EU GDP and 7.9 million jobs, and in no case less than €760 million, equivalent to one third of the sector’s previous funding envelope.

Rationale

Europe’s creative talents stand to lose at least €760 million in innovation funding under the Commission’s new EU budget, the European Competitiveness Fund. In the current proposal, the Cultural and Creative Industries are named just once — with no dedicated budget line in any of the Fund’s four windows. Yet what is not named cannot be funded: absence from the window means exclusion from the Fund’s €234.3 billion and, through its link to FP10 / Horizon Europe, from research funding too. This is wholly disproportionate to a sector that generates 4.4% of EU GDP and employs 7.9 million people — a weight on par with sectors that already hold named windows. At roughly 0.3% of the Fund, the floor we request is modest by any measure: a fraction of the window’s budget, and no more than the baseline the sector already had. Without it, Europe weakens the very competitiveness the Fund sets out to build.

01

A Future Creative Innovation Infrastructure.

Build a Creative Innovation Infrastructure as the additional content layer of European digital sovereignty.

Establish the European cultural and creative economy as a broad thematic priority within Pillar II of Horizon Europe, with a dedicated multi-year budget allocation matching the scale of other strategic European priorities.
Implement through dedicated governance, including experts from the CCIs in designing calls and managing project portfolios.
Launch a Next-Generation Knowledge and Innovation Community for the cultural and creative economy, established under FP10 and operating independently of existing EIT governance.
- Led from across the sector, with design research and methodology explicitly represented.
Deploy a CreativeStack layer to secure our digital sovereignty.

02

Extend the Digital, Cultural & Creative Leadership policy window.

Integrate CCIs into a renamed primary Policy Window of the Competitiveness Fund: "Digital, Cultural & Creativity Leadership."

Structural inclusion to harness the transformative power of CCIs and integrate their strategic innovation into the core of European competitiveness — supporting digital sovereignty and cultural autonomy.
- Because building new products, services and business models is fundamentally a design task, this is an economic argument, not only a cultural one.
Earmark at least 2% of the National and Regional Partnership Plan (NRPP) to the CCIs and align with the Competitiveness Fund and the Cultural Compass.

03

Creative skills support — by design, not by accident.

Activate Article 30's Skills Guarantee and VET partnership mechanisms for the cultural and creative workforce — same status as clean transition, defense, space and digital.

Skills Provisions and a Skills Guarantee for creative workers undergoing AI-driven sectoral restructuring.
VET partnerships linking creative SMEs with vocational training providers.
Coverage of AI literacy for creators, rights-management training, audiovisual production skills, and digital craft transitions.

04

Bridge the gap, license the future.

Fair play and pay for creative work and labour. Unlock public markets and value-based modern procurement for Creative Innovation — secure future income and fair compensation in the age of AI.

Pre-commercial and innovative procurement (already in the ECF Toolbox) applied to creative innovation, public service media and content production — extending the AVMSD logic into a coherent "Make European" content procurement track.
Article 28(g) on intellectual property valorisation operationalised for creative SMEs — collective licensing infrastructure, rights-management tools, and remuneration mechanisms so creators participate in the AI economy rather than being displaced by it.
A creator-rights and licensing framework addressing the structural silence of the current draft on copyright in the AI era.

05

Guarantee CCI representation on ECF governance bodies.

Amend Article 14 (Governance & Advisory Boards) — and seat CCIs at every table shaping the AI Act, the GPAI Code of Practice and the EU AI Office.

ECF Strategic Stakeholders Board — add cultural and creative sectors to the explicit list of sectors balanced in the Commission's open call for nominations.
Advisory Board on the ECF InvestEU Instrument — ensure CCI expertise on the design of financial products affecting creative SMEs and scale-ups.
Investment Committee — "wide knowledge of the sectors covered by the ECF" must explicitly include the creative economy.
At least three members in the Council for European Competitiveness Research with demonstrable cultural and creative sectors expertise — including senior experience in cultural and creative industrial policy and in artistic research.

CCIs must be represented on the ECF Strategic Stakeholder Board, the programme committees, the EU AI Office, the GPAI Code of Practice working groups, and all bodies shaping AI Act implementation.

— Demand №05, Brand.Brief Dossier 001

We call for a comprehensive strengthening of the CCI through targeted amendments to FP10 (Articles 3, 4 and 6) under the ECF Regulation. The transformative power of cultural and creative professionals must be formally recognised and named across all EU programs — and the sector must maintain a dedicated strategic home under Horizon (Cluster 2) within the Research and Innovation landscape.

By adapting Erasmus+, CERV, Creative Europe, the New European Bauhaus and AgoraEU to the actual workflows of artistic research and creative production, Europe can finally bridge the gap between cultural value and economic innovation.

Erasmus+ CERV Creative Europe New European Bauhaus AgoraEU Horizon — Cluster 2 FP10 · Art. 3, 4, 6

Initiator

Add your organization to the brief — write to brand.brief@creativefed.eu.

Name Organization

Email Country Postcode

Message (optional)

Required fields. On submit, we send a confirmation email to the address you provide — please click the link in it to confirm your sign-on.

Privacy: your details are stored on EU-based servers (Listmonk · Brevo) and used only for Brand.Brief sign-on and follow-up communications. We do not share them with third parties. Full details and your GDPR rights are in our privacy notice.

With this I sign the Brand.Brief manifesto and agree to be listed as a signee. My email may be used for related communication by Creative Fed and other organisations of the Brand.Brief project. You may also list my organisation publicly on brandbrief.eu as a supporter. (Optional — leave unchecked to keep my organisation private.) Show my name masked (e.g. G****** T******) on the public signee list. My country and postcode remain visible. (Optional — for individuals who want to be counted but not named.)

Policy & Strategy

01
The Brand.Brief — full document (PDF)↓
The complete Brand.Brief addressed to the European institutions: situation, the five demands, governance asks and supporting evidence.

Creative Fed · 1 June 2026 · PDF · 1.4 MB
02
European Competitiveness Fund — proposed Regulation→
COM(2025) 555. The post-2027 funding framework that mentions the cultural and creative sectors in a single line of its 132 pages.

EUR-Lex · 16 July 2025
03
A Culture Compass for Europe — COM(2025) 785 final→
Commission Communication setting the strategic direction for cultural policy under the next MFF 2028–2034 and source for the 7.9 million-jobs figure.

European Commission · 12 November 2025 · PDF
04
Union of Skills · Skills Guarantee→
EC framework on upskilling and reskilling in strategic sectors — referenced as Article 30 in the ECF Regulation; CCIs are currently excluded.

European Commission
05
EU Artificial Intelligence Act — Regulation (EU) 2024/1689→
The horizontal AI rulebook now shaping how creator works are used for training and how generated outputs reach the European market.

EUR-Lex · 13 June 2024
06
General-Purpose AI Code of Practice→
Voluntary code from the EU AI Office on transparency, copyright and systemic-risk obligations for GPAI providers — central to creator remuneration.

European Commission · 10 July 2025

EU Programmes

01
Creative Europe 2021–2027→
The €2.44 billion programme supporting the cultural, creative and audio-visual sectors — small in scale relative to other Union priorities.

European Commission
02
Horizon Europe — Cluster 2: Culture, Creativity & Inclusive Society→
Pillar II research cluster currently carrying CCI work — limited in scale relative to other clusters; the brief demands a dedicated multi-year allocation.

European Commission · DG Research & Innovation

Why this brief, why now.