A coalition representing hundreds of European institutions engaged in artistic and cultural research has written to the Irish government, calling on it to use its presidency of the Council of the European Union to secure dedicated funding for culture in the EU's next seven-year budget.
The open letter, signed in Galway on 26 June and addressed to the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance, and the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, was presented at the 2026 International Forum on Artistic Research, hosted at the University of Galway by the Society for Artistic Research. The four-day event drew artists, researchers and policymakers from across the continent and fell just days before Ireland assumed the Council presidency on 1 July, taking over from Cyprus.
The letter is the latest step in the #NamePlaceFund campaign, coordinated since May by the Artistic Research Alliance — a grouping of nine European networks, including Culture Action Europe, the AEC – European Association of Conservatoires, ELIA, CILECT and the European Association for Architectural Education — together with the Michael Culture Association, MusiQue - Music Quality Enhancement, EQ-Arts | Enhancing Quality in the Arts and others.
The letter is calling for a vision of research, innovation and competitiveness in the next long-term EU budget (MFF) that fully embeds the arts and the CCSI and sets out three demands. It asks the Council to put culture in the title of the "society" policy window that sits within Horizon Europe's proposed Pillar II, "Competitiveness and Society" — renaming it "Culture and Global Societal Challenges" — and to include creativity in the title of one Competitiveness Fund policy window. It calls for dedicated budget lines, work programmes and calls for proposals in both programmes, rather than a principle folded into other priorities.
And it attaches figures to the request: at least €5 billion of the roughly €7.6 billion earmarked for that Horizon Europe policy window should go to culture, with a further €3 billion earmarked for culture and the creative industries within the Competitiveness Fund.
The coalition also credits the Council's own negotiating position with progress, welcoming its move to include culture explicitly under the Society pillar, while arguing it must go further to anchor the funding structurally.
Campaigners have also pointed to the Commission's own estimate that every euro of Horizon Europe funding could generate up to €11 in GDP gains by 2045 — a programme-wide figure for research and innovation as a whole, which the coalition argues should extend to justify investment in culture specifically.
The intervention follows the signing, on 18 June in Brussels, of a Joint Declaration titled "Europe for Culture – Culture for Europe" by the presidents of the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of the EU — Roberta Metsola, Ursula von der Leyen and Nikos Christodoulides, the latter representing Cyprus's outgoing presidency.
It was the first time the three institutions had united behind a common political statement on culture, with Glenn Micallef, the European Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture and Sport, describing the move as putting culture higher on the EU's political agenda. Advocacy groups have since argued that the declaration's ambitions now need to be matched by money in the Multiannual Financial Framework, the point at the heart of the #NamePlaceFund letter.
