What is not named cannot be funded.
Reframe the EU Competitiveness Fund's policy window.
Demand
We call on the Commission, the European Parliament and national governments to broaden the ‘Digital Leadership’ policy window of the future European Competitiveness Fund and revised Horizon Europe programme to include explicitly the cultural and creative dimension, reframing it as ‘Digital, Cultural and Creativity Leadership’ — and to ring-fence at least €760 million for the Cultural and Creative Industries, commensurate with their 4.4% of EU GDP and 7.9 million jobs.
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.