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This paper is focused on two of the items included in the mandate given to the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) Group of Experts in charge of drafting the Report for the Library Action within the EU Work Plan for Culture 2023–2026. These two items are (a) exploration of European funding sustaining a Europe-wide library policy, and (b) the need for overcoming regional disparities. Library expenditure has declined during the decade 2011–2021 not only in real terms (−33% in Denmark; – 30% in The Netherlands; −19% in Finland and Sweden), but also as a share of national expenditure in cultural services.
Regional disparities are a stumbling block both at intra- and inter-state levels, with Portugal, Spain and Germany investing in libraries from six to five times less than Nordic libraries. Libraries are taking up new challenges, they are a ‘third place’: community education providers, democracy catalysts, digital literacy suppliers. In order to face these challenges, they need to diversify their sources of income with both funds indirectly managed by the European Commission (Structural Funds) as well as directly managed by it (e.g. Erasmus+, CERV). This article describes the opportunities but also the limits of a European funding policy exclusively based on directly managed funding. The European Commission programme ‘Telematics for Libraries’, which ran from 1991 to 1998 (endowed with €95 million at current prices), shows that money injection may increase library inter- and intra-national disparities, and not reduce them. Hence, two proposals. The first is to work towards the creation of a ‘Culture and Inclusion’ line into the chapter ‘Social Inclusion’ of the next round of European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIFs) 2028–2035, with a central role assigned to libraries as third place. From this perspective, libraries would be reference institutions for social inclusion in the cultural field, just as sport is considered a vehicle for inclusion in the recreational field. The second proposal is to work actively to bundle directly managed and indirectly managed funds allocated to libraries, thus creating bridges for the transfer of know-how and best practices from one category of EU funding to another. These proposals may well be relevant for the OMC Group of Experts and for those European library organisations who are committed to an inclusive and sustainable library development
