Between preservation and transformation: environmental sustainability in European Union cultural heritage policy

This thesis examines the evolution of environmental sustainability within European Union cultural heritage policy from 2014 to 2025. Employing recent scholarship analytical frameworks, the analysis traces how the relationship between cultural heritage and environmental sustainability has been conceptualized across Council Conclusions, Commission Communications, Open Method of Coordination reports, and key initiatives including the New European Bauhaus and Creative Europe programme. The analysis reveals a complex and sometimes contradictory trajectory. The 2014 policy framework was dominated by conservative storylines, instrumentalizing cultural heritage primarily as a resource for economic growth and European identity consolidation. The European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018 marked a discursive shift toward participatory approaches and community stewardship. More recent developments represent promising attempts at inter-ecosystemic integration, linking cultural objectives with environmental policy frameworks. Drawing on the concept of planetary boundaries, the thesis concludes that current policy approaches, while valuable, operate within structural contradictions that limit their transformative potential, with environmental considerations inevitably subordinated when trade-offs with economic objectives emerge.