European Federation for the Creative Economy EFCE PO Box 75 1000 AT Amsterdam, NL [email protected] www.creativefed.eu
PRESS_Release_Culture Compass Fund_20260618.pdf
Brussels/Vienna, 18 June 2026 – CreativeFED welcomes the Joint Declaration Europe for Culture – Culture for Europe (18th of July 2026) as an important first step. For the first time, the European Parliament, Commission and Council of the EU jointly recognise what the campaign Brand.Brief, initiated by CreativeFED – with more than 60 organisations and a combined network of over half a million people across Europe's creative workforce – has argued for a month: that culture and creativity are strategic to Europe. But between recognition and funding there are huge gaps.
The declaration treats creativity as culture – heritage, access, artistic freedom. It invokes competitiveness, but routes none of it to the budget. This approach keeps culture and the creative industries in the box of cultural production – content and heritage to be subsidised as culture, rather than innovation to be invested in. Money spent as cultural subsidy can never build what creative innovation is for: Europe's own content layer, and the structural and digital sovereignty that rests on it.
None of its commitments reach the European Competitiveness Fund, where the innovation money sits. The result is countable: under that €234.3 billion Fund, creative work still has no named place, and the sector stands to lose at least €760 million for creative innovation – around 0.3% of the Fund, for a sector worth 4.4% of EU GDP and 7.9 million jobs. What is not named cannot be funded.
"We have spent the last ten years proving the sector is strategic and a substantial part of the European innovation infrastructure, and the declaration now says so," said Gerin Trautenberger, Chair Creative FED. "Fine. Then stop filing us under culture when the innovation budget is written. We are not asking for charity at 0.3% of the Fund – we are asking to be named under the European Competitiveness Fund (ECF), because in Brussels what is not named cannot be funded. Two promises sit in that declaration, and neither comes with a euro attached. We need to fix that."
A second gap: the declaration pledges to protect creators' pay in the age of AI, but names no mechanism. Brand.Brief's answer is an AI sovereign-wealth fund – a collective fund, financed by those who train AI on European creative work – that pays creators when their work trains a machine, with nothing used without consent and payment.
"Every model trained in Europe was built on the work of writers, musicians, designers and film-makers who were never asked and never paid," said Gerbrand Bas, Board Creative FED. "An AI sovereign-wealth fund (SWF) turns that around: those who train AI on European creative work pay into it, and creators are paid when their work trains a machine. This is not a subsidy. It is the bill finally arriving for work that has already been used."
Recognition was the first step. Funding is the test. Today the Brand.Brief Citizen Petition opens these demands to citizens and carries them into the trilogue.
Sign at www.brandbrief.eu/petition.html.
About CreativeFED / Brand.Brief Brand.Brief is a Europe-wide campaign initiated by CreativeFED (creativefed.eu) for the recognition and fair funding of creative work. It unites organisations and citizens behind two demands: a named place for creative innovation in EU competitiveness and research funding, and fair payment for creators whose work is used to train artificial intelligence.
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Press contact: Gerin Trautenberger · [email protected] · +43 699 1902 9606 · creativefed.eu
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