How the EU budget is spent: Creative Europe: encouraging creative growth and employment

Written by Matthew Parry and Magdalena Pasikowska-Schnass

Cultural and audiovisual operators in Europe face not only the challenges of the shift towards digitalisation, market fragmentation, global competition and a difficult financial climate. They are also confronted with a linguistically fragmented European cultural and audiovisual market. The Creative Europe programme creates favourable conditions for multilateral and international cooperation in Europe and for transnational mobility for creative industry workers and their works, and fosters ‘European’, i.e. cross-border, careers in these sectors.

Creative Europe (CE), which will support European cultural and audiovisual sectors during the 2014-20 period, represents a 9% increase in funding on the total spent on the Culture, MEDIA and MEDIA Mundus programmes it replaces. Of the €1.46 billion financial envelope, 31% is earmarked for culture, 56% for media and 13% for a cross-sectoral strand, including a Guarantee Facility to be launched in 2016.

The Creative Europe annual work programme for 2015 earmarks €3.6 million for publishing houses and publishers for translation of European literature under the Culture strand; a further €2.5 million for European production companies developing projects with a potential for high circulation in European and beyond, such as a video game concept; while the lion’s share (€4 900 000 of approximately €9 260 000) of the third, cross-sectoral, strand will fund the Creative Europe desks in participating countries.

Read this Briefing on Creative Europe: encouraging creative growth and employment in PDF