Active Participation in European Cultural Policy

A critical reading of the Sector Blueprint and Culture Compass

#3 TOWARDS A LEGAL GROUNDING OF CULTURAL PRACTICE

By Giorgio Bacchiega

Whether cultural practice survives political cycles and market logics increasingly depends on the nature of the claims it can make on public resources. In governance systems that demand measurable contributions across multiple policy domains and operate through short funding models, appeals to intrinsic value are no longer sufficient. At the same time, growing concerns about artistic freedom in several Member States reveal how fragile the conditions for cultural activity can be. Against this backdrop, both the Culture Compass and the Sector Blueprint turn to the language of rights to reinforce the principles guiding cultural policy. The shift is significant and, in its intentions, welcome, but it also carries consequences that deserve careful attention.

THE RIGHTS REACTION
The Commission’s Compass frames the freedom to create and participate in culture as fundamental rights, anchoring them within international human rights instruments and European constitutional principles. In doing so, barriers to participation cease to be simply questions of political priority but become matters requiring justification and, where possible, correction, offering cultural actors a new form of normative leverage. Within a policy domain in which the Treaties limit the EU’s ability to engage directly, rights-based framing becomes one of the most effective instruments for systematic action because it grounds cultural policy objectives in broader democratic and legal principles that the Union is institutionally better equipped to uphold. This approach translates into concrete proposals, including stronger alignment between cultural funding and democratic principles, as well as an EU Artists Charter articulating common rights-based standards for fair working conditions.

The Blueprint similarly emphasises cultural rights, explicitly identifying non-discrimination, institutional autonomy, and freedom from political interference as necessary conditions for access to EU support. Beyond this, it connects cultural participation to the right to education and treats fair remuneration and social protection as matters of social justice, forming a rights ecology rooted in civil, social, and educational dimensions. Ultimately, at a conceptual level, while the Commission translates rights into policy principles within existing frameworks, the Blueprint presents democratic standards as intrinsic conditions for the very possibility of cultural life.

THE PROTECTION PARADOX
Traditionally, cultural policy models have sought to safeguard creative autonomy by maintaining a degree of distance between political authority and artistic practice. Here, institutions provide support while the evaluation of artistic value remains separate from political decision-making. A rights-based model, by contrast, alters this balance: once rights are translated into external criteria governing access, mechanisms intended to protect cultural practice also determine who can access resources, separating institutionally recognised activities from those left out.

This shift becomes visible in the architecture proposed by the Compass, which introduces a structural paradox: mechanisms designed to strengthen cultural rights may, in practice, narrow the space available to independent actors.

Because it relies on soft-law instruments, the Compass exerts normative pressure on Member States without escalating to direct sanctions, though its effectiveness heavily depends on domestic conditions. Under EU law, the Union cannot directly manage national cultural systems and must rely on Member States to implement recommendations. In countries where democratic standards are declining, governments controlling key institutions may channel resources toward aligned organisations, while still offering formal opportunities for participation and access. Although such measures formally comply with EU recommendations, they reflect the priorities of these states; initiatives outside their agenda are left exposed, thereby distorting the intended effect of the rights-based operation as a whole.

In this context, the framework’s impact depends entirely on the willingness of those same Member States to implement corrective measures on breaches of artistic freedom or other initiatives for safeguarding democratic resilience, and to do so in good faith.

THE RIPPLE EFFECTS CHALLENGE
Building on this scenario, if further mechanisms, such as linking funding to democratic standards, were strategically applied to cultural programmes, they could introduce a formal layer of conditionality aimed at ensuring that EU funding respects and enforces democratic principles, potentially increasing the vulnerability of independent organisations. However, access to EU support typically requires a formal institutional intermediary, which in some Member States aligns with authorities that fall below democratic thresholds. As a result, independent initiatives, often operating outside the regime’s orbit and relying on EU programmes to counterbalance politicised domestic environments, may be unable to apply for or receive funding, not because of the nature or quality of their work, but because the intermediaries controlling access reflect insufficiently democratic premises.

Here, rights create expectations of remedy, yet the instruments proposed fail to deliver one. Measures intended to safeguard democratic standards risk inadvertently silencing the very spaces where pluralism and dissent are sustained. At the same time, the Compass explicitly recognises the need to protect the most vulnerable actors, but its measures focus on creating safe havens for at-risk or displaced artists, leaving largely unaddressed the civil society actors who sustain cultural democracy through everyday practice in Member States experiencing democratic decline.

If the European Union is serious about grounding cultural policy in rights, it must develop mechanisms capable of bypassing national gatekeepers in Member States that restrict artistic freedom or fall below democratic standards. The rights invoked in both Compasses are genuine in intention, yet they ultimately shift the question from whether cultural participation is recognised as a right to who, in practice, is able to exercise it. Legal instruments may formally protect participation, but they inevitably reshape the pathways through which it becomes achievable.

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This series is intended as a critical yet constructive contribution to the Culture Compass debate, exploring where active participation challenges existing policy assumptions and where new frameworks may emerge. Future entries will address participation versus access, indicators and measurement, and the place of grassroots practices within European cultural ecosystems.

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Consulta Periferie Milano is a network-centric platform (formally a second-level association of undertakings or association of associations of undertakings) formed by 36 cultural, charity, trade, visual and performing arts organisations, cultural centres and local newspapers active in the peripheries of Milan with the purpose of drawing constant attention and find original solutions to the problems of the multifaceted peripheral landscape of Milan in cooperation with academic, political and societal forces.