Spending on culture in selected EU countries, data for more recent available year

The EU supports culture and the audiovisual sectors through its framework programme, ‘Creative Europe’, which has a budget of €1.46 billion for the 2014-2020 period. The commitment appropriations for 2017 stand at €201 million (0.13 % of the EU budget) or €0.39 per citizen. Still, arguably there is substantial added value even at this level of funding, since nearly all the cross-cultural exchange and circulation of art within the EU is paid for by the EU budget.

Obviously, the biggest part in terms of funding for culture comes from the EU-28’s national budgets and represented between 0.2 % and 1.9 % of GDP for the 2000-2005 period. Compared to the US federal endowments for culture and the arts, the national budgets across the EU seem impressive.