The aim of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of why the European Commission believes that the European Union (EU) should support culture and if a change has occurred over time. This is achieved by combining a qualitative idea analysis and a quantitative content analysis and analyzing proposals from 1998, 2004, 2011 and 2018 that the Commission has presented regarding a framework programme for the cultural sector within the EU. Geir Vestheims theory that all cultural policy is instrumental was used as a theoretical framework since it consists of ideal types that can explain why states support culture: because of its qualitative, economic, social or democratic instrumental values. The results of the study show that qualitative, economic, social and democratic arguments could be found in all four proposals and particularly that the proposal from 2018 contained several diverse arguments. A change over time was discovered however, since the most prominent arguments in the proposals from 1998 and 2004 revolved around the fact that culture was to be supported because of its impact on social development. The proposals from 2011 and 2018 were instead comprised of a large amount of arguments pertaining to the economic benefits of supporting culture.