The aim of this master’s thesis is to study the discourses on culture as developed by EU Commission. The method applied is a discoursebased historical analysis, where analysis of arguments and metaphors are functional to the enlightening of the construction of discourses within EU cultural policy. EU official documents constitute the empirical material studied. The theoretical framework of the thesis draws upon cultural public sphere theory as well instrumentalist cultural policy research. The different discourses on culture that the Commission has formulated in the thesis’ empirical material are set in relationship with the issues of Europeanisation, cultural citizenship and the transformations from a Fordist to a post-Fordist society.The history of the Commission’s cultural policy is presented in three phases. In a first phase (1957-1991) cultural policy is an implicit policy area and the Commission’s discourses on culture are found to oscillate between a conception of culture as singular, a common European culture, as well as plural, i.e. the different cultures of the member states. In a second phase (1992-2006), opened by the Maastricht Treaty, cultural policy is an explicit policy area and discourses on culture rotate around the unity-in-diversity formula, with a stronger accent on diversity compared to the past. In a third phase (2007-) cultural policy is mainly characterised by a neoliberal discourse on culture as economic resource. Discursive relationships between EU cultural policy and other EU policy areas of interest for library and information science (information society policy and information dissemination policy), are also amongst the thesis’ findings. / Program: Masterprogram: Biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap, Digitala bibliotek och informationstjänster