Future EU funding for culture-Europa Nostra

Europa Nostra submitted its replies to two public consultations on EU funds organised by the European Commission and which are expected to feed into the discussions for the next Multiannual Financial Framework of the European Union and future funding programmes. One consultation focused on the area of cohesion, another consultation on EU funds in the area of values and mobility. This includes programmes like Erasmus+ or Europe for Citizens but also the current Creative Europe programme. Europa Nostra's network project 'Sharing Heritage - Sharing Values' and the EU Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Awards are co-funded by Creative Europe.

For the next generation of these programmes, Europa Nostra recommends to reinforce the support to cultural heritage as a tool to preserve cultural diversity, while at the same time fostering the sense of European identity due to the inherently European dimension of our shared heritage. Generally, the capacity of cultural heritage to provide tangible and lasting socio-economic benefits at all levels (local, regional, national and European) should be more clearly recognised. Moreover, Europa Nostra calls for programmes to encourage cooperation with heritage-related projects/programmes of other policy areas such as research, urban policy, tourism, economy, sustainable development, agriculture, environment, (territorial) cohesion and health.

A key objective of all programmes should be valorising and widely disseminating heritage-related project outcomes (best practices and innovative solutions/approaches) as well as fully benefiting from the experience and expertise provided by EU-funded European networks and platforms by integrating them more effectively in policy-making at European level (not only in the cultural field but also in other areas such as the ones mentioned above). This would enhance the European added value, outreach and impact of the funding granted under these programmes.

As supporting evidence, Europa Nostra enclosed a summary of the 10 key findings of the report "Cultural Heritage Counts for Europe".

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