Europe now stands at a complex crossroads, where global issues such as development, citizenship, competitiveness and sustainability are at stake. Given the importance of creativity and social innovation for European development strategies, the potential of culture as a tool for strategy implementation is crucial. Therefore, a range of public policies in the field of culture and creative industries need to be rethought and reformulated in order to strengthen the multi-level coordination between different policies, to enhance their centrality in regional development and to provide legal and financing mechanisms for policy responses to different challenges. This paper provides a quick review of the main features of the different cultural policies implemented by the EU member states, analyses the financial budgets allocated by the main EU countries to their cultural policies and outlines the main features of European cultural policies as reflected in the European Agenda for Culture. Finally, the need to reformulate cultural policies in accordance with a more comprehensive paradigm is elaborated