Transnational cultural networks: soft mechanisms for cultural diversity and frictionless mobility: Tools for EU legitimacy?

Transnational networks in the cultural sector have expanded significantly in Europe over the last three decades. Nevertheless, although this phenomenon is fuelled by the EU’s cultural policy and corresponding funding initiatives, there is a noticeable lacuna in the academic literature on this issue. This article, therefore, examines the emergence and institutionalisation of these networks, shedding light on: 1) the relationship between networks’ evolution and the EU’s cultural policy discourse, and 2) networks and the Europeanisation process. To this end, the study employs a document analysis and uncovers three distinct policy clusters, with a shift from a transnational European identity to one of cultural diversity and a people-centered approach. These outcomes lead to an investigation of whether and how these discursive shifts are interconnected with the development of transnational networks. This conclusively reveals how their implementation is intricately linked not only to the foundational tenets of the EU’s cultural policy–the subsidiarity principle, but also to the broader context of EU policymaking. The article concludes that EU intervention in the cultural sector can be justified as a discursive agent in the evolving European public sphere, with significant implications for professionals, policymakers and scholars in the field.