EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Brussels, 17.12.2025

SWD(2025) 418 final

COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT

EVALUATION

on the interim evaluation of the Creative Europe programme 2021-2027 and final evaluation of the Creative Europe Programme 2014-2020

Accompanying the document

Report from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Social and Economic Committee and the Committee of the Regions - a Decade of Creative Europe

{COM(2025) 768 final}

Table of contents

1.Introduction

1.1.Purpose and scope of the evaluation/fitness check

2.What was the expected outcome of the intervention?

2.1.Description of the intervention and its objectives

2.2.Points of comparison

3.How has the situation evolved over the evaluation period?

4.Evaluation findings (analytical part)

4.1.To what extent was the intervention successful and why?

4.1.1.    MEDIA    

4.1.2.    Culture    

4.1.3.    Cross-sectoral strand    

4.1.4.    Financial Instruments    

4.1.5.    Joint assessment of administrative expenses and burden relating to implementation    

4.2.How did the EU intervention make a difference and to whom?

4.2.1.    MEDIA    

4.2.2.    Culture    

4.2.3.    Cross-sectoral strand    

4.2.4.    Financial Instruments    

4.3.Is the intervention still relevant?

4.3.1.    MEDIA    

4.3.2.    Culture    

4.3.3.    Cross-sectoral strand    

4.3.4.    Financial Instruments    

5.What are the conclusions and lessons learned?

5.1.Conclusions

5.1.1.    MEDIA    

5.1.2.    Culture    

5.1.3.    Cross-sectoral strand    

5.2.Lessons learned

5.2.1.    MEDIA    

5.2.2.    Culture    

5.2.3    Cross-Sectoral strand    

Annex I: Procedural Information

Annex II. Methodology and Analytical models used

Annex III. Evaluation matrix and, where relevant, Details on answers to the evaluation questions (by criterion)

Annex IV. Overview of benefits and costs [and, where relevant, Table on simplification and burden reduction]

Annex V. Stakeholders consultation - Synopsis report

Annex VI. Creative Europe Programme Specific Priorities

Annex VII. List of Programme Indicators

Glossary

1.1.Purpose and scope of the evaluation/fitness check

The Creative Europe Programme is the European Union’s funding programme for support to the cultural, creative and audiovisual sectors. It was established in 2013 by Regulation (EU) 1295/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council (hereinafter ‘the 2014-2020 Creative Europe Regulation’), 1  integrating the Culture, MEDIA 2007 and MEDIA Mundus programmes into one single funding instrument. In 2021, a new Creative Europe was established for the period 2021-2027 (Regulation (EU) 2021/818 of the European Parliament and of the Council (hereinafter ‘the 2021-2027 Creative Europe Regulation’) 2  maintaining the core aspects of the first Programme, while introducing some new elements.

This evaluation is carried out in line with Article 21(2) of Regulation (EU) 2021/818, requiring the Commission to carry out by 31 December 2024 an interim evaluation of the 2021-2027 Programme. It is also carried out in line with Articles 18(5) and 18(6) of Regulation (EU) 1295/2013, requiring the Commission to perform by 30 June 2022 a final evaluation of the 2014-2020 Programme. Following the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences on cultural and creative sectors, the decision was taken in November 2021 to align Creative Europe’s evaluation approach with other DG Education, Youth, Sport and Culture (EAC) coordinated programmes (such as Erasmus +). The final evaluation of the 2014-2020 Programme was then to be performed together with the interim evaluation of the current Programme. The evaluation examines actions from 2014-2023 in all Member States and third countries associated with the Programme. The evaluation aims to establish lessons learned from the former and current Programmes and to still inform the implementation of the Creative Europe Programme under the 2021-2027 MFF. The findings have also contributed to the impact assessment for the Creative Europe successor Programme - AgoraEU. 3 Additionally, the evaluation is intended to enhance the knowledge base in the cultural, creative, and audiovisual sectors, offering insights for future policy development and practical implementation. The evaluation assesses the performances of the Programme against the five evaluation criteria established in the Better Regulation Guidelines and Toolbox: 4  

·The effectiveness of the measures taken to achieve the Programme objectives, including the new initiatives;

·The efficiency of the Programme, including simplification measures put in place, as well as the scope for further simplification and burden reduction;

·The continued relevance of the objectives of the Programme;

·The Programme’s internal and external coherence with other programmes with similar or complementary objectives; and

·The EU added value resulting from the actions and activities supported by the Programme, including in terms of sustainable impact, compared with what could reasonably have been achieved by Member States at national and/or regional levels.

The evaluation examines the results and long-term impact of the Creative Europe 2014-2020 and the mid-term results of Creative Europe 2021-2027. This Staff Working Document (SWD) draws mainly, among other sources, 5 on the supporting study conducted by ECORYS Europe EEIG SA (tender lead) and KEA European Affairs SRL (partner), under contract with the European Commission, Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture (DG EAC). 6  

The evaluation was conducted using a mixed method approach combining quantitative elements (Programme data, Eurostat data, survey data, counterfactual methods) with qualitative elements (e.g. interviews, literature review and desk research). More specifically, it included:

·Comprehensive desk research, which consisted of a literature review and quantitative desk research;

·A counterfactual analysis on the impact of the MEDIA strand; 

·A contribution analysis using a mix of quantitative and qualitative data for the Culture strand;

·Consultation activities, detailed in Annex V. 

However, some challenges exist. While the evaluation made use of large, detailed external datasets, some gaps in the data available remain (see ‘Lessons learned’ section). Additionally, there is potential for missing perspectives in interviews, and the possibility of bias in self-reported data from participants when it comes to surveys conducted for the evaluation. It is also challenging to assess the impact of new actions under Creative Europe 2, because their impacts are likely to materialise over a longer time period. Despite these challenges and limitations, the methodology provides a solid foundation for assessing the Programme.

2.1.Description of the intervention and its objectives

Culture and media ( 7 ) are the backbone of the European project: they underpin the core values upon which the EU is founded – respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. 8 This is even more important in periods marked by geopolitical tensions, the rise of extremism and disinformation. 9 Culture and media matter for Europe and its people: they foster a sense of belonging to a common space and add value to the lives of individuals. They help to improve quality of life and mental health. They also bring cohesion to our societies and attractiveness to our regions.

The EU’s role in the field of culture is specified in Article 167 of the TFEU, a supporting competence for the EU to contribute to the flowering of the cultures of the Member States, while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore. The support for culture is coherent with this framework.

The EU has adopted single market policy and legislation (governed by Treaty articles on the Single Market, Industry, Competition) for the copyright-intensive industries and, in particular, for the audiovisual and media sectors. The support to audiovisual and media is coherent with this framework.

Thus the 2021 legal basis of Creative Europe is based on Article 167(5), and Article 173(3) of the TFEU.

At the same time, the budget of Creative Europe is relatively modest, equivalent to 0,2% of the 2021-2027 MFF. Total MEDIA support in the same period accounts for less than 1% of total national support (including to public broadcasting and film funds) to the audiovisual industry in the EU27 Member States 10 .  Therefore, the outcomes expected of Creative Europe in addressing the key challenges of the cultural and creative sectors are limited, as the Programme is implemented in full respect of subsidiarity. However, it remains true that few other programmes -especially at national level- provide comparable support for cross-border collaboration, where Creative Europe has strong EU added value.

Challenges and needs of the cultural and creative sectors

The Cultural and Creative Industries ecosystem plays a key role in the EU economy. It has been identified as one of 14 key industrial ecosystems in the EU Industrial Strategy 11 . The ecosystem represents approximately 3.95% of EU value added, employs 8 million people and includes around 1.2 million businesses, of which over 99.9% are small and medium-sized enterprises with the biggest share of micro-SMEs (96,4%) among all industrial ecosystems. 12 At the same time, the ecosystem includes large companies like broadcasters and Hollywood major studios and even global tech giants. Overall, the CCS are estimated to be bigger than other strategic sectors such as chemicals or automobiles. However, the sector was particularly hit by the pandemic, especially when it comes to offline cultural activities.

As highlighted in the explanatory memorandum of the Commission’s proposal for a Regulation establishing Creative Europe 2, 13  the CCS face a number of challenges:

[…]

·First, the cultural and creative sectors in Europe have to face increased competition from new and strong global players such as search engines and web based social platforms. This has led to the need to develop new business models and realise the potential for growth by taking advantage of digital technologies in order to be competitive in a global market.

·Second, the digital shift is bringing about a change in paradigm, having a massive impact on how cultural goods are created, managed, disseminated, accessed, consumed and monetised, changing the value propositions that prevailed in the analogue era. Digitisation has facilitated the distribution of cultural and creative content and services, but it has also intensified competition of content across borders on a global scale.

·Third, there is a highly fragmented market for cultural and creative works stemming largely from Europe's cultural and linguistic diversity, which results in the cultural and creative sectors being essentially fragmented along national and linguistic lines and lacking critical mass. This diversity is part of Europe's cultural richness. At the same time, the transnational circulation of works remains limited. It is therefore important to stimulate the transnational circulation and co-production of works across borders and to develop more effective solutions to reach audiences across borders.

·Fourth, market concentration is a growing concern. In certain cultural and creative fields, a trend is emerging where a limited number of major players account for a large part of global sales.

·Fifth, Europe's audiovisual industry is internationally recognised, but it is not competitive enough within the Digital Single Market. 80% of European films are national productions but co-productions travel better than national films. In some countries, audio-visual professionals need to strengthen their capacity to operate.

·Finally, there is a growing phenomenon of disinformation. Content industries, in particular the news media sector, are at the core of the fight to maintain a culture of healthy democratic debate. Artistic freedom and a diverse and free media environment are central to conveying diverging opinions and perspectives. They contribute to pluralistic societies where citizens are able to make informed choices, including in the context of political elections. 

These challenges of a trans-national nature require a targeted European approach to optimise the potential of the sectors to contribute to jobs, growth and social inclusion, including for the most disadvantaged and hard-to-reach groups. They are common to all EU Member States and have cross-border dimensions. Indeed, while action at national level is important, the single Member States on their own do not have enough leverage to fully address them […]

Objectives and priorities of Creative Europe

The general objectives of the Programme are to safeguard, develop and promote European cultural and linguistic diversity and heritage; and to increase the competitiveness and the economic potential of the cultural and creative sectors, in particular the audiovisual sector. 14

Both CE 2014-2020 and CE 2021-2027 Programmes share broadly comparable general and specific objectives that focus on promoting transnational cooperation, co-creation, innovation, circulation, and mobility within the European cultural and creative sectors. Both aim to bring added value by strengthening the capacity of these sectors to operate beyond national borders, emphasising collaboration and circulation of works and ideas, and recognising the dual nature of the cultural and creative sectors, their cultural and economic value. The Culture strand of both Programmes highlights the importance of transnational actions that complement regional, national, and international policies, thereby enhancing cultural diversity and promoting shared European heritage and identity. Both Programmes also stress the need for cooperation among cultural players, including artists and cultural, creative, and audiovisual professionals, to tackle common challenges and create economies of scale that leverage additional funding. For MEDIA, there is more emphasis in Creative Europe 2021-2027 on the competitiveness of the audiovisual industry, owing to the increased competition from global players in the EU market, for example the growing position of non-European platforms in the distribution of content, and the changes in media production and consumption.

The specific objectives of Creative Europe 1 (2014-2020) and Creative Europe 2 (2021-2027) are detailed in Annex VI.

The Union’s media policy is governed by the single market provisions of TFEU, particularly Articles 26 (establishing the internal market), 56 (ensuring the free movement of services), 101-109 (addressing competition rules) and 173 (competitiveness). These articles ensure the free movement of audiovisual services across EU Member States, supporting the creation of an integrated digital single market. The AVMSD aligns with these provisions by setting common standards for content regulation, advertising, and consumer protection, while allowing for some flexibility at the national level. This approach promotes cross-border distribution of media content, strengthens competition, and supports a diverse and pluralistic media landscape across the EU. Moreover, the European Media Freedom Act lays down common rules for the proper functioning of the internal market for media services, safeguards the independence and pluralism of media services and establishes the European Board for Media Services.

The Programme has finally to be seen in the context of the Commission’s communication entitled ‘A New European Agenda for Culture’, 15  which sets out objectives for the CCS. The Agenda aims to harness the power of culture and cultural diversity for social cohesion and societal well-being by fostering the cross-border dimension of cultural and creative sectors and fostering their capacity to grow, to encourage culture-based creativity in education and innovation, and for jobs and growth, and to strengthen international cultural relations.

Furthermore, CE 2014-2020 contributes to the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8 (Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all) by supporting the competitiveness of the CCS, through capacity building and skills development and through testing new business models in a rapidly evolving digital context. CE 2021-2027 contributes to various UN SDGs through several of its actions: SDG 3 (Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all ages) via the CCS GF ; SDG 5 (Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls) via its cross-cutting focus on gender equality and inclusion; SDG 8 via its support for job creation, growth and investment in the European Digital Single Market and its support to CCS competitiveness; SDG 11 (Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable) via the synergies between the projects supported by the Programme and the New European Bauhaus; SDG 12 (Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns) through the cross-cutting focus on greening; SDG 16 (Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels) through all the actions supporting the news media sector, and SDG 17 (Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership) through the international dimension of the Programme.

On the following pages are visual representations of CE 2014-2020 and CE 2021-2027 intervention logics.

Intervention logic of Creative Europe 1 (2014-2020)

Intervention logic of Creative Europe 2 (2021-2027)

Programme design

The Programme is divided into three strands: (i) the Culture strand, which covers cultural and creative sectors apart from the audiovisual sector; (ii) the MEDIA strand, which covers the audiovisual and gaming sectors; and (iii) the Cross-Sectoral strand, which covers actions across all cultural and creative sectors with a particular focus on the news media sector.

CE 2014-2020 was established by Regulation 1215/2013 and the successor Programme CE 2 (2021-2027) was established by Regulation (EU) 2021/818. The latter brought had the same general objective and built on the previous experience, also taking into account the need for EU intervention in the audiovisual sector to accompany the Union’s Digital Single market policies. DG EAC is the Commission’s department in charge of cultural policy, while DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology (CNECT) is responsible for the interrelated regulations, policies and programmes concerning audiovisual and media. While DG EAC was the leading department for the management of CE 1, the two DGs co-manage CE 2. For its two iterations, the Programme has been directly implemented by EACEA. 

* In addition to Culture Moves Europe, implemented by the Goethe Institut, MediaInvest is also implemented through indirect management by EIF as a blending facility with InvestEU.

Creative Europe is open to the participation of non-EU countries indicated in the corresponding Regulations, providing specific conditions are met. 13 countries are currently associated to CE2: EEA/EFTA countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kosovo 16 , Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Tunisia and Ukraine. In CE1, Türkiye participated until its departure in 2017. Moldova participated in CE1 (fully in Culture and partially in MEDIA) as of 2015 and until the end of the programming period. The European Commission and Moldova signed an Association Agreement on 2 September 2025, which foresees the country’s participation in the Culture strand of Creative Europe as of 2026. Participation in the MEDIA strand is contingent upon Moldova’s alignment with the AVMS Directive. 

2.2.Points of comparison 

Based on the positive conclusions of the midterm evaluation of Creative Europe 1, Creative Europe 2 represents an evolution rather than a revolution. It builds on the strengths of the previous support measures, while introducing some key improvements and innovations. In particular, Creative Europe 2 recognised that the digital shift represents a paradigm change for cultural and creative sectors, with new opportunities for the creation and distribution of European works, including access, which benefits European society as a whole.

The overall Programme budget was significantly strengthened to reach EUR 2.5 billion for the 2021–2027 period, i.e. an 66% increase compared to the previous programming period (2014–2020). The increase was intended to allow the Programme to improve responses to the challenges faced by the CCS and improve support to high-quality projects that have consistently been proposed.

Culture Strand:

In Creative Europe 1, the Programme initially featured two key performance indicators related to i) the overall reach of the actions supported by the strand and ii) the number of projects addressed to young people and under-represented groups and the reach of these projects. The objectives set at the beginning of the MFF for these indicators were reached in both cases. However, as commented above, the Programme introduced, through a delegated act in 2019, a series of additional indicators to better capture the performance of the Programme in line with its intervention logic. In the Culture sub-Programme, 9 additional sub-indicators were added to capture data beyond Programme’s visibility. These indicators concerned the support to artists and cultural professionals, the general public and organisations (as well as their size) reached by the Culture sub-Programme. The objective to reduce societal challenges through Culture was addressed through an indicator to capture the number of projects supported by the Programme addressed to disadvantaged groups. In relation with the objective of international cooperation and internationalisation of careers to increase the capacity of the CCS to operate internationally, the number of cultural and creative activities organised with the Culture sub-Programme’s support have been integrated as a key-performance indicator. The specific objective of support to the circulation of European literature and contribution to linguistic diversity was also addressed through three key performance indicators introduced in 2019 on i) the number of literary translations undertaken per year; ii) the number and percentage of translations from lesser-used languages and iii) the number of books produced with the support of the Programme. Finally, a specific indicator was set on the sub-Programme’s main action, the support to Cooperation Projects, through a specific indicator to capture the number and relative share of small-scale and large-scale cooperation projects. As the new Key-Performance indicators were introduced late in the last budget cycle, no baseline and objectives were set for this new set of indicators. The detail of the results by these indicators is found in Annex VII of this SWD.

In Creative Europe 2, the Culture strand now features a series of 5 indicators to capture the Programme performance. The number of transnational partnerships created with the support of the Programme allow to capture the number of organisations and projects supported through the Programme, indiscriminating of the action. The transnational mobility of artists and cultural and creative professional is also captured by a specific indicator which amalgamates results of Culture Moves Europe, as well as the one assessed by projects during their final evaluation. The objective to address societal challenges through Culture-funded projects is also assessed by a specific indicator on the number of projects addressed to socially marginalised groups. The visibility of the projects funded under the Culture strand, also present in CE1, keeps on being monitored in CE2, through a specific indicator on the number of people accessing European cultural and creative works generated by the Programme. Finally, in line with the ambition of the Programme to contribute to international relation, stimulate intercultural dialogue and increase international circulation and visibility of European culture and diversity, the number of projects that involve an organisation based in a third country is now assessed through a dedicated indicator. All indicators are on track to meet their target by the end of the budget cycle, except for the visibility action which has been estimated at a too large number, which should be revised. If CE1 indicator foresaw a reach to 7 million citizens by the end 2020, the CE2 the target by 2027 is of 552 million individuals reached. Taking into account the budget increase from CE1 to CE2 and the number of 90 million individuals by the 2014-2020, a target set at 160 million individuals reached by the activities supported by the Programme appears more realistic. The Section 5.2.2 (“Lessons learned”) outlines how the Commission plans to improve the data collection strategy and the monitoring system.

MEDIA and Cross sectoral

The MEDIA strand has been strengthened by focusing on cross-border collaboration and co-productions in order to scale up companies. It also responds to new trends in the industry, such as the growth in cross-border audiences for high-quality TV series and the emergence of virtual reality (VR) and digital innovation. Its market research activity has been expanded.

The Cross-sectoral strand incorporates significant changes to reflect the new objectives. For the first time, structured support is given to the news media sector to accompany its transformation in the digital age and strengthen media freedom and pluralism. A new Creative Innovation Lab now supports cross-sectoral innovation. The CCS Guarantee Facility (CCS GF) financial instrument has been integrated within the new InvestEU Programme.

The points of comparison for MEDIA include the official monitoring indicators, but these were supplemented with additional indicators for the purposes of carrying out this evaluation. The latter were possible due to the availability of external data. This is further explained under section 4.1.2. Remaining data gaps are indicated, and possible new indicators are put forward under Section 4.1.2 and 5.2.

The assessment of the cross-sectoral strand and financial instruments uses as a basis mainly the official KPIs, but data gaps and possible future indicators are also identified for these.

This chapter describes the state of play in implementing Creative Europe 1 and 2 Programmes, explaining the situation during the evaluation periods both legally and on the ground.

Creative Europe 1

Creative Europe 1 was designed with a budget of EUR 1.46 billion. The budget was divided between the two different Sub-programmes and the Cross-sectoral strand as follows: at least 56% for the MEDIA Sub-programme, at least 31% for the Culture Sub-programme, and a maximum of 13% for the Cross-sectoral strand. Compared with the budget indicated in the legal instrument, the Creative Europe 2014-2020 financial programming was increased by 2.7% to reach EUR 1.5 billion.

The Creative Europe 1 budget remained relatively stable in the first two years of its implementation and increased slightly every year, from 2016 until 2020.

Over the course of the CE 1 period, approximately 30,000 applications were submitted to 155 calls for proposals and led to the funding of 14,828 projects. The number of projects funded under the MEDIA Sub-programme was considerably higher than those under the other strands, with a total of 13,549 projects. The Culture Sub-programme supported 1,213 separate projects that involved 4,375 beneficiary organisations. The Cross-sectoral strand financed a total of 66 distinct projects, including 38 Creative Europe Desks.

In line with the composition of the CCS, the majority of the support provided by the different strands of Creative Europe has been redistributed to small and medium-sized entities. In the MEDIA Sub-programme, 99% of the direct beneficiaries were SMEs (reflecting the 99% of SMEs amongst European AV enterprises), of which 25% were small and nearly 70% micro. Micro and small organisations accounted respectively for 50% and 40% of the total value of grants under CE 1.

Following the UK's 2016 vote to leave the EU, the UK left the EU on 31 January 2020. Although potentially eligible to join as a third country in Creative Europe 2, the UK chose not to make use of this possibility, leading to the closure of the UK Creative Europe desk. The UK CCS had been major beneficiaries of Creative Europe: between 2014 and 2019, the UK was involved in 609 cultural projects, which received EUR 100 million from the Programme. Türkiye joined CE1 but decided to suspend its participation in the Programme in 2020. All in all, 15 non-EU countries participated in CE1: Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Iceland, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Tunisia, Türkiye and Ukraine. In total, 1,347 projects involving 561 organisations from these countries were supported under CE1. The wide participation of third countries to the Programme is a very positive aspect of the Programme as it contributes to the EU efforts for cultural diplomacy by creating tangible ties with these countries. For countries on the path to EU accession, their participation in Creative Europe is a positive aspect in relation to Chapter 26 of the Acquis Communautaire on Education and Culture. As regards audiovisual, alignment of third countries with the Audiovisual and Media Services Directive is an ex-ante condition for participation in the MEDIA strand, thus acting as an incentive to adopt EU standards.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread lockdowns in Europe, severely impacting cultural venues and the CCS, which were among the hardest hit. For example, cinema operators in the EU reported a 70% drop in box-office sales in 2020, music venues reported a 76% drop in attendance (64% in revenues) and museums lost 75-80% of their revenues (in popular touristic regions) 17 . In response, the Programme supported the launch of the online platform Culture Unite in May 2020 and the set-up of Perform Europe to support circulation in the performing arts sector.

Creative Europe 1 was initially monitored through 18 indicators set in its legal base. These were completed by further 24 indicators introduced in the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/1974 of 17 May 2019 supplementing Regulation (EU) No 1295/2013. The original indicators did not allow for a comprehensive monitoring of the Programme’s progress and performance towards the set objectives, as a limited number of these indicators would qualify as results or impact indicators 18  The list of indicators, as well as the results gathered, are found in Annex VII.

Creative Europe 2

Creative Europe 2 was designed with a budget of EUR 2.5 billion in the MFF 2021-2027, representing a 66% increase compared to the earlier programming period. This has allowed for greater reach and impact within the CCS. In addition, compared to the budget indicated in the legal instrument, the Creative Europe 2021-2027 financial programming has been increased so far by 1%. 19

The budget was divided as follows:

The overall budget was frontloaded, with a third of the budget committed in the first 2 years of the Programme, in order to address the difficult situation of the CCS hit by the COVID-19 crisis. In 2022, Creative Europe 2 benefited from an overall increase close to EUR 100 million compared to 2021, representing a budget increase of 33% compared to the previous year. Following the financial programming profile, the annual budget for Creative Europe 2 returned in 2023 to the regular profile and is programmed to have a steady but low growth until the end of the Programme cycle in 2027.

Creative Europe 2021-2027 Annual Budget

Source: Creative Europe Spending Review, 2024

98 calls for proposals have been launched so far under Creative Europe 2, which led to the selection of 2,588 projects involving 2,566 organisations. Over this period, EUR 877 million were disbursed: EUR 483 million under the MEDIA strand, EUR 283 million under the Culture strand and EUR 82 million under the Cross-sectoral strand.

Similarly to the previous Programme, the majority of the organisations that benefitted from Creative Europe 2 are small and medium-sized organisations. The profile of the beneficiaries of CE2 remained the same as for CE1.

13 of the 15 third countries participating in CE 1 decided to renew their participation under CE 2 and Moldova is expected to participate in the Programme as of 2026. From 2021 to 2023, Creative Europe 2 supported 418 projects that involved 415 organisations from third countries associated to the Programme. Among these projects, 227 are led by an organisation located in one of these countries.

In February 2022, Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine further disrupted the CCS, particularly in neighbouring countries, and prompted shifts to support Ukrainian cultural actors and counteract the wider regional instability. Among other measures, one of the most ambitious Creative Europe actions to date was the dedicated call for proposals to support the Ukrainian CCS launched in November 2022 under the Culture strand with a EUR 5 million budget.

Altogether, Creative Europe 2 has a list of 15 key performance indicators: 13 of them are divided by strands, while two encompass the whole Programme. The indicators are listed in Annex VII.

Culture Strand

Between 2021 and 2023, the Culture strand supported a total of 630 projects, redistributing EUR 294 million to 2,176 organisations. These included 432 European Cooperation Projects involving 1,978 organisations across 39 countries. Over 1,500 books from 1,200 authors were translated with the help of more than 1,000 translators. The Programme also facilitated the establishment of 37 European Networks representing over 4,000 cultural and creative organisations and supported 16 Platforms gathering 299 organisations for the support of young emerging artists. Additionally, the strand supported four orchestras under its Pan-European Cultural Entities scheme. The last two actions together benefit 3,875 emerging artists and act as an accelerator for their careers. As a novelty in the Programme, the Culture Moves Europe mobility scheme, with a budget of EUR 21 million in the 2022-2023 period, supported the mobility of 3,049 artists and the creation of 202 artist residencies accommodating 772 individual artists. Moreover, the Programme supported annual prizes in literature, music, architecture, and cultural heritage, and provided financial support to the European Capitals of Culture and the networking of the European Heritage Label sites. It also developed a new sectoral approach to better target specific cultural and creative sectors, particularly music, books & publishing, architecture, and cultural heritage, aligning funding with policy initiatives.

Despite its significant achievements, the Culture strand faces oversubscription issues, leading to fierce competition for available funds. The European Cooperation Projects scheme saw its success rate falling to just 26% in 2022, despite receiving in this same year the highest budget ever, i.e. EUR 69 million. The number of applications continues to rise, illustrating the sectors’ strong interest in, need for, and perceived value of the Programme; for example, submissions for European Cooperation Projects increased from 431 in 2021 to 863 in 2023 (i.e., a 78% increase). Out of 2,518 proposals received in the Culture strand over these years, 658 high-quality projects had to be rejected due to insufficient funds, 488 of which were for European Cooperation Projects. To counteract these oversubscription issues, measures to improve success rates were introduced in the Annual Work Programme 2024 onwards, in particular the capping of the number of projects individual organisations that could participate in. In addition, calls for large-scale cooperation projects are now published every second year, to allow for the selection of a higher number of smaller-scale projects for the same amount of budget in years when there are no large-scale projects. This choice was made to favour high quality medium-scale projects, which often suffered from a low success rate due to limited budget. It also aimed at enhancing inclusivity and helping smaller entities facing more difficulties to act on a European level. Indeed, smaller-scale projects allow to promote the access of grassroot organisations and support them in the creation of new partnerships and development of new activities and innovative ideas. It aligns with the objective of CE2 to increase inclusivity, competitiveness and scalability. It is also a way to help smaller countries with smaller organisations to get access to the Programme, as predominantly well-established European organisations tend to participate in large-scale.

MEDIA strand

There were no major changes in the allocation of support for main objectives between CE1 and CE2, but the increased focus of CE2 on competitiveness is visible in the budget. The total grants awarded under CE1 amounted to EUR 775 million. At EUR 663 million, the total grants awarded by end 2024 under CE2 are already close to the entire CE1 budget. This is thanks to the increase in the overall budget under CE2. Despite a reduction of actions from 18 to 14 and some changes in certain actions, the overall objectives of support remained the same. Support under MEDIA can be broadly classified under two types of support: support to individual audiovisual works (for the development and/or production and/or distribution of films and series) and horizontal support aimed at developing audiences (B2C activities, like cinema networks and festivals showing non-national European works) or improving the competitiveness/business capacity of the European audiovisual sector (B2B activities, like markets, training or supporting innovation). Support to individual works amounted to 63% of CE1 grants and, 60% of grants awarded under CE2 as of end 2024. Support for content creation and distribution is roughly equally represented under both CE1 and CE2. Support for B2B business activities has increased from 14% to 20% of the budget under CE2, reflecting the increased focus on this area in the legal base. The increase was achieved by a slight decrease in the share of funding for horizontal audience development (from 23% to 20%) and Distribution-related funding (from 30% to 27%).

Support focused on individual works accounts for the overwhelming majority of supported projects, as can be expected from the nature of these grants. 12,104 projects were supported under CE1 and, as of end 2024, 2,765 under CE2. 90% of the projects funded under CE1 and 80% funded under CE2 thus far were for the content creation and distribution of individual audiovisual works, while the remaining projects were roughly equally distributed among the two sets of horizontal actions (audience and business-focused). The average size of the grant increased significantly for all the four objectives (content creation, distribution, horizontal audience development and horizontal business development).

Success rates can be very low for certain actions but improved under CE2. The average success rate under CE1 was 48% but showing a great degree of variation between 19% (single project development and video games development actions) and 100% (cinema networks, which had one single beneficiary, Europa Cinemas.) Automatic distribution support also pushes the average up significantly. Under CE2 the average success rate increased to 53%, but the success rate remained below 30% for a number of actions, mainly under content creation support for development.

Cross-Sectoral strand

The cross-sectoral strand has evolved significantly over the two Programmes. The Cultural and Creative Sectors Guarantee Facility was successfully funded over 2016-20 and was then integrated into Invest EU as of 2021. The total amount of funding allocated was EUR 236.9 million of financial commitment, which led to 22 financial intermediaries signing guarantee agreements with the EIF.

In the current Programme a new set of actions was introduced in support of the news media to accompany its transformation in the digital age and strengthen media freedom and pluralism, with a small annual budget of about EUR 15 million. Applications rose from 30 in 2021 to 106 in 2023 and the success rate therefore declined from the success rate is 18.5% to 10% in 2023.

A new Creative Innovation Lab was introduced in 2021 to support cross-sectoral innovation. By 2023 projects were awarded a total of approximately EUR 20,500,000 at an average of EUR 624,000 per project. In 2021, only 10 out of 43 proposals met the evaluation threshold, but subsequently the quality improved. There was a rise in applications from 43 in 2021 to 101 in 2023 and the success rate declined sharply from 23% in 2022 to 6% in 2023.

CE Desks

The total amount of funding allocated to the Creative Europe desks in the first three years of the 2021-27 Programme was EUR 18,030,690, which was equivalent to an average of EUR 6,010,230 per year. This compares to total funding of EUR 36,361,230 in the 2014-2020 Programme at an average of EUR 5,194,461 for each year. The rise in the annual budget for the Desks appears to be reasonable considering the high rate of inflation in the 2021-23 period. The volume of support required from desks, including the size and number of applications and subsequent beneficiaries, has increased, whilst a much greater proportion of smaller projects were supported in the previous Programme (particularly under the MEDIA Sub-programme).

4.1.To what extent was the intervention successful and why? 

This section will assess the implementation of Creative Europe based on the following aspects: effectiveness, efficiency and coherence. The assessment will be made separately for the MEDIA strand (audiovisual and video games), the Culture strand (all other cultural and creative sectors), the Cross-sectoral strand (news media, Creative Innovation Labs, Creative Europe desks). Financial instruments (Cultural and Creative Sectors Guarantee Facility and MediaInvest) will be assessed separately because of their specificities. The section will close with a common assessment regarding administrative expenses and burdens relating to the implementation of the entire Programme.

4.1.1. MEDIA

Effectiveness

Audiovisual sector

MEDIA supports activities across the audiovisual value chain. The audiovisual value chain is composed of authors (directors, screenwriters, actors), production companies, B2B distributors (sales agents, distributors) and B2C distributors (cinemas, broadcasters, streamers). Other actors, including film festivals and film markets, may combine B2B (market, training) and B2C (film screenings) activities. MEDIA support focuses on content creation, distribution and (mainly theatrical) exhibition, with direct support to these activities. The remaining actions (e.g. relating to markets, innovation and training) indirectly support these activities. This assessment will focus on the core areas of funding.

The section will analyse the effectiveness of MEDIA based on the main specific objectives for CE1 and CE2, as outlined in Section 2.1 (intervention logic) which respond to the main needs and dual objectives, namely cultural diversity and competitiveness. In particular:

1) Boost the transnational circulation and audiences of European AV works 20 (relevant for both cultural diversity and competitiveness) – This is explicitly stated in the specific objectives under CE1 in particular 21 ; and is implicit in the specific objectives of CE2 

2) As regards competitiveness, the CE2 legal base has more elaborate objectives, i.e. to promote ‘the competitiveness, scalability, cooperation, innovation and sustainability including through mobility’ 22 of the audiovisual sector. The CE1 regulation simply refers to strengthening the financial capacity of SMEs in the cultural and creative sectors.

3) The legal bases for both iterations of the Programme point to a European added value in levelling the playing field among countries. Balanced geographical representation appears as a specific objective in the CE1, but not in the CE2 legal base (where it is nevertheless mentioned as a priority).

Points of comparison specific to MEDIA:

CE1 set a number of sector/market-wide indicators relating to the transnational circulation/external dimension of supported activities under MEDIA. These responded to the need to make EU content travel better across borders. This need persisted across both Programmes. For example, in theatrical exhibition, where we have data as of 2014, tickets sold for non-national EU27 content amounted to a relatively small and declining share of all admissions in Europe: 7.5% in 2014 (baseline CE1), 7% in 2020 (final result and baseline CE2) and 6% in 2023 (mid-term result of CE2). The indicators set for the CE1 Programme to respond to this need were as follows: 1) the number of admissions to non-national films in Europe in cinemas; 2) the number of admissions to European films worldwide in cinemas; 3) percentage of European AV works in cinemas, on TV and on digital platforms; 4) number of people in Member States/participating countries having access to non-national audiovisual works; 5) number of video games produced in Member States/participating countries (turnover was used as a proxy). As detailed in Annex VII, targets were met in the case of 1-3, but not for 4 and 5. Not meeting the targets for 4), while meeting 1-3 may already suggest that attracting audiences to European works is a challenge additional to making such works internationally available (e.g. screen them in theatres, broadcasting them on TV and/or getting them into video-on-demand catalogues).

On the basis of the mid-term evaluation, the indicator framework was amended. This was because market-wide indicators are affected to a substantial degree by factors outside of the MEDIA strand/Sub-programme (e.g. investments by US studios), which limits their usefulness as monitoring indicators for the success of the Programme. The mid-term review of CE1 therefore identified more targeted KPIs, which were subsequently adopted by a Delegated Act in May 2019 23 . The new corresponding indicators were set as number of admissions in the Member States for films from other Member States distributed in the Union with the support of the Programme; share of admissions in the Member States for films from other Member States; average number of non-national countries in which the supported works have been distributed. Given the late stage of Programme implementation, no targets were set for 2020. However, successive monitoring reports 24  provided the state of play as of 2020. Based on the data provided, works receiving support generated 136 million cross border viewers in in 2020. In 2020 on average 6% of films shown in cinemas in Member States originated from other Member States, and supported films were distributed in 4.5 countries on average. No corresponding data was provided in a systematic way for TV broadcasts, because the granting period would often end before TV release and there is no public regular TV viewership database available.

As regards transnational circulation aspects of the Programme’s objectives, CE2 retained one of the indicators identified in the mid-term review of CE1. This was the number of people accessing MEDIA supported European works from other participating countries. The other indicators were not included in the legal base, following negotiations with the co-legislators and in line with horizontal guidelines to base reporting mainly on data coming from beneficiaries, reduce the number of indicators and give preference to indicators which reflect horizontal priorities of all programmes. The Programme is on track to achieve the 2027 target for cinema admissions to non-national supported works of 93 million over 2021-2027 (with 18 million viewers in 2021-2022 alone, with some project data still to arrive).

Finally, the mid-term review introduced a more qualitative indicator to monitor the transnational cultural impact of supported works. This concerned the recognition received by supported works at major festivals and awards of international standing (such as Berlinale, Cannes, Academy Awards and European Film Awards). However, no targets were identified, and the indicator was not retained for CE2 as these were not compatible with the horizontal guidelines for setting indicators (the festivals included could change over the years). Between 2017 and 2020, supported films won 165 major awards and prizes were given to supported films. For the purposes of this evaluation, it was calculated that between 2014 and 2024, 299 MEDIA-supported works received prestigious international awards. In total there have been 1077 nominations, 458 awards, and a further 25 selections and honourable mentions.

As regards competitiveness, there were no audiovisual-specific indicators set originally for CE1 for the specific objective of strengthening the financial viability of SMEs in the creative and cultural sectors, because of the challenges to systematic monitoring. Following the mid-term review two indicators were introduced, but no targets were set: 1) number/share of audiovisual companies who report an improved market position due to MEDIA support; and 2) number of co-productions created with the support of the Programme, including co-productions with diverse partners. The latter relates to the objective of levelling the playing field. Between 2014 and 2020 388 intra-EU co-productions were supported in development and production (accounting for 86% of TV and film projects supported). 25  

The indicators introduced under CE2 to measure competitiveness represent an evolution of the indicators introduced following the mid-term review of CE1. While the number of co-productions was retained, it was complemented also by the overall budget of supported co-productions. The Programme is on track to achieve the 2027 target. Based on already available data that in the years 2021-2023 there were 1,633 co-productions supported out of expected 3,000 over the years 2021-2023 (and some data from 2023 is yet to arrive). The success of B2B actions related to markets and training is measured by two indicators: 1) Number of people reached by B2B promotional activities in major markets and 2) Number of participants in learning activities who assess they improved their competences and increased their employability. This indicator also introduced a diversity-related sub-indicator, namely the proportion of women who positively assess the impact of the activities. The Programme is on track to achieve the target indicator for learning activities: including the baseline of 2,200 in 2020 the Programme has already reached 23% of the 15,760 target for 2027 in its first two years, while the target of 55% women who assess the activities positively has been exceeded in the latest data available for 2022 (59%). However, the target of 1.8 million for the second indicator may not be reached as it turns out that lockdowns might have long-term impacted the events sector, which do not attract the same scale of visitors as before COVID, when the target was set.

Finally, as regards the level playing field, CE2 retained the indicator on co-productions involving a low-capacity country and added an indicator in the share of supported works in lesser used languages. These are languages other than English, German, French, Italian, Spanish. The data available by 2025 (only around 20% of applicable projects yet) indicates that this indicator is on track. In 2020-2021 there were already 528 films supported out of 2845 expected over 2021-2027.

Overall, this interim evaluation has shown that the monitoring framework for the two iterations of the Programme is not sufficient to fully assess the impacts of the Programme. The pre-2018 CE1 indicators are too wide and not linked sufficiently to the programme and targets are missing for the indicators introduced after the mid-term review. While the indicators introduced under CE2 do have targets and relate to Programme outputs, they are still missing some data which would allow to draw wider conclusions. Also, there is no perfect way to set targets, as these can be always seriously affected by external impacts, even if they are closely related to the objectives (like e.g. less participation in physical events or new type of data becoming available only during the period). The nature of sources which could be used in official indicators is also limiting (mainly because many interesting data about the results of the support become available only after the support period is over).

Also, the indicators under CE2 do not comprehensively cover all Programme actions and impacts. The KPIs do not cover the performance of supported works in broadcasting sector (TV views and broadcasting time) which accounted for between 75-86% of all revenues in the audiovisual sector. Neither do they cover the performance of supported works in the increasingly important streaming sector (which grew its AV market revenue share from <1% to 16% since 2014 and drives all growth in the sector). The current evaluation therefore attempts to provide a wider set of indicators and benchmarks to address the shortcomings of the monitoring framework. This is in particular the case with the counterfactual analysis carried out for the specific objective of transnational circulation and consumption of supported works. The current evaluation could benefit from an expanded set of detailed market data on the availability and audiences of European AV works. 26  Crucially, the counterfactual analysis could therefore also cover better the broadcasting and Video-on-Demand (‘VoD’) segment (includes mostly streaming, but also online rentals and purchases of films and series), which together accounted for over 90% of all EU audiovisual sector revenues in 2023 27 .

Under the ‘Lessons learned section’, proposals will be made for further possible indicators to complement the current framework with a view to the final evaluation of CE2. Whilst all the indicators may not be included in the legal basis they could be monitored independently by the Commission.

Transnational circulation and consumption of European AV content

In line with the overall objectives outlined in CE1 and CE2 a counterfactual analysis 28  tested the core research questions based on Programme objective relating to transnational circulation and audiences: whether MEDIA funding for the creation (development and/or specific works was associated with 1) improved non-national circulation of the works in Europe (cinema, TV, VoD); and 2) a higher non-national consumption of European AV works outside the country of origin (cinema, VoD). 29  The counterfactual analysis covered actions supporting individual films and series under CE1 and CE2. Across both Programmes, until 2023, MEDIA has supported a total of 7887original unique audiovisual titles (films and series) of which 5,216 were supported through content creation actions (development and production), and 2,671 through distribution-related actions. These types of support accounted for almost two thirds of the budget and 90% and 80% of the supported projects under CE1 and CE2 respectively. 

The counterfactual analysis showed a strong positive association between MEDIA funding and the non-national circulation of EU AV content 30 across all three main exhibition channels, namely cinema, TV and VoD. The positive impact of support can be observed under CE1 and CE2, for both content creation and distribution support, while the impact for CE1 is stronger and the results are more robust from a methodological perspective. This is not surprising as both Programmes provide development, production (only TV and online content) and distribution/promotion support for films and series with a focus on cross-border potential, while the sample for CE2 is significantly weaker due to the time delay of impact and due to external shocks (for example COVID reduced cinema admissions by at least 70% in the first year of lockdowns). 31

·Cinema: MEDIA supported films 32   are associated with a release in an additional 6.55 more non-national countries, when compared to non-supported films (estimated at 1.1 countries) This amounts to 86% of all the average non-national circulation of supported films (measured as the total number of non-national countries supported films circulate in). Under CE1 MEDIA funding is associated with an additional 6.89 non-national countries, with a corresponding figure of 5.45 under CE2. This amounts to an 88% and 80% contribution to the number of non-national countries a supported film circulates in under CE1 and CE2 respectively. 33

·TV: MEDIA supported films and series 34 were broadcast in 15.4 non-national countries on average (17.1 under CE1 and 5.9 under CE2), 9.2 countries more than comparable unsupported EU works across both Programmes (unsupported works were broadcast on average in 3.9 countries under both CE1 and CE2). Adjusting for relevant characteristics, 35 MEDIA support was associated with broadcast in an additional 9.5 countries on average during CE1 and CE2 combined (10.6 and 3.3 for CE1 and CE2 respectively). 36  

·VoD: In 2024 MEDIA supported films and series were available in VoD catalogues in around 9 non-national countries under both CE1 and CE2 respectively. Non-supported EU works released during CE1 and CE2 respectively were available in around 5 countries on average (again, no meaningful difference between the two Programmes). Adjusting for relevant characteristics, MEDIA support resulted in VoD availability of films and series in an additional 3.2 countries on average for the combined period (2.8 under CE1 and 3.7 under CE2).

·Series supported for development and/or under TV/online actions. The counterfactual analysis also confirmed the positive impact of development and/or production support for the cross-border circulation of series separately. Support for series is associated with a significant number of additional countries in which a series is accessible (5.95 additional countries in which a series was on average available on TV and 2.68 additional countries in which a series was available in at least one VoD catalogue). 37  Looking at series separately also confirms that MEDIA content creation funding (development and/or production) alone also has a significant positive impact on the circulation of works across Europe. The transnational circulation potential of works supported from the content cluster is an integral part of the selection criteria in the relevant calls and the above results suggest that these criteria do have a positive impact on transnational circulation in practice.

In addition to cross-country circulation, the counterfactual analysis also confirmed a strong positive impact on audiences, namely admissions to films when it comes to cinema. MEDIA support was associated with an average 125,419 more non-national cinema admissions (per supported film) relative to unsupported films. CE1 shows a stronger impact (additional 134k admissions) than CE2 (97k). 38  If this figure is extrapolated to all supported films under CE1, MEDIA funding is associated with an additional 241 million non-national admissions in total, as compared to non-supported EU films, 39  The additional admissions associated with MEDIA funding amount to 87% of the non-national audience of supported works and 71% of all non-national admissions to EU films (both supported and unsupported).

Based on the limited data available for VoD views/consumption, the significantly higher availability of supported works in non-national VoD catalogues do not seem to have translated into significantly higher views. On the contrary, unsupported works on average achieved higher views than supported works. The average views for supported works on VoD catalogues in the sample was 376,346 for works supported during CE1 and 496,676 for CE2 (405 361 for both Programmes combined). This compares to significantly more non-national views for comparable unsupported works, which average 1,301,953 views for the CE1 and 1 551 724 for the CE2 2 period (1,400,631 across the combined period). This may be explained on the one hand by methodological issues, and by market dynamics on the other. 40  All in all, despite the methodological problems, these findings showcase a significant challenge for MEDIA funding, namely to achieve the same success on streaming as it did in cinemas (in the absence of sufficiently granular data for films and series shown on TV, the impact of MEDIA funding on non-national TV audiences cannot be estimated).

Horizontal support to audience development complements support to individual works. While the counterfactual analysis included actions providing support to individual works or slates, MEDIA provides horizontal support to audience development, focusing on B2C engagement, through supporting cinemas and festivals in particular.

Most support to cinemas is dedicated to incentivising European programming, but also to exchanges of best practices among the members of the supported network, Europa Cinemas. Europa Cinemas is a continuing action under CE2. Both absolute funding rate and funding has increased significantly under CE2 41  During 2014-2023, the network increased its geographical coverage by 32%: from 576 municipalities in 2015, to 762 in 2024, in almost all MEDIA-participating countries. This increase has been gradual over this period, both under CE1 and CE2. The network’s members are located in large and smaller cities alike, also in sparsely populated areas where access to a cultural offer is more challenging. Accounting for only 10% of all screens in the EU, by 2023 Europa Cinemas sold almost 40% of all tickets to non-national European films (16/41 million). The average share of non-national films from MEDIA countries was around 35% under CE1 but dropped to around 30% under CE2. This can be explained by the UK leaving the Creative Europe Programme and hence UK films no longer counted in this indicator. The 30% is still considerably higher than the total share of non-national admissions to EU27 films in the EU (7.5% in 2014, 7% in 2020 and 6% in 2023 42 ).

As regards VoD networks and operators, EU support was introduced in 2014 and has contributed to the growth of independent streaming services. The user base for supported VoD platforms showing a high share of independent European works increased by 52% (users and subscribers) from 10,729,000 in 2016 to 16,322,535 in 2020. The call has attracted EU independent VoD services, whereas broadcaster VoD services have not applied (large national broadcasters typically develop their own national streaming services serving domestic markets). In particular some beneficiaries have expanded - there have been some recurring projects with a large reach and which attracted private investors, such as FilmIn (Spain) and MUBI (UK, supported under CE1 before Brexit). Also, the established cross-border player Arte has been a beneficiary of the scheme in recent years. The beneficiary platforms experiment with different business models (advertising supported streaming, online rentals and buys, and the most coveted subscription streaming). The level of funding makes up around 10% of revenues. Some supported services showed a sustained revenue growth of over 2.5 times over the last few years. Nonetheless the level of EU support, on average EUR 8 million per year, has clearly not had the ambition of creating platforms capable of competing with giant global streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon or Disney. Indeed, global competitors have a market share of over 80% of EU subscriptions.

Competitiveness

MEDIA funding has resulted in a substantial share of supported projects in development being produced and released. Across both Programmes an estimated 29% of films and series supported for development have gone (or may still go on) release. MEDIA development support is estimated to have contributed 26% of the total development costs of supported titles. This increased to 35% under CE2.

Available evidence indicates that MEDIA funding for development significantly increases the chances of a supported film or series being produced and released. While it is not possible to get reliable market-wide data on how many films and series in development get released eventually, anecdotal evidence suggests MEDIA results are significantly higher than the market average. 43 The positive impact of MEDIA on development success rate is also supported by evidence from the beneficiary survey: 76% of respondents to the beneficiary survey agreed that their projects contributed to increasing the capacity of audiovisual operators to develop European audiovisual works with a potential to circulate in the Union and beyond, and to facilitating European and international coproduction. Furthermore, it is notable that the 29% success rate of MEDIA funded development projects was achieved against a backdrop of increased financial risks for EU independent production in recent years. 44  As shown above (counterfactual), the design of MEDIA support for content creation has also increased transnational addressable demand for supported works and hence the competitiveness of production companies.

The time it takes for supported films and series to be released also seems to compare well with industry averages. The average time for titles funded under development to get released is 2.7 years for titles developed for TV and 3 years for titles developed for cinema. 45 This is similar to the average of even Hollywood studio films 46 (MEDIA supported films are all independent European productions, on average with much smaller budgets than Hollywood studio films).

Furthermore, the KPI on co-productions confirms the positive impact of MEDIA funding on the competitiveness of production companies. Co-productions increase competitiveness in various ways, in particular by increasing the addressable audience abroad, bringing in new sources of financing (public and private), combining know-how and capabilities, and transferring skills and know-how. As regards co-productions, as of end 2023 the 2027 target is on track to be met for the number of coproductions 47 and has already been exceeded when it comes to the budget of supported coproductions. 48

Moreover, co-productions involving two or more countries are indeed significantly higher among supported works than non-supported works. The review of external datasets conducted as part of the counterfactual analysis showed that across both Programmes an estimated 48.6% ) of a large sample of works that had received MEDIA support involved two or more countries, in comparison, just 13.7% of comparable unsupported EU27 works 49 . The share of European co-productions in all supported works has increased substantially under CE2 (from 36% under CE1 to 84% under CE2). This increase is driven by an increase in co-productions among works supported under the Content actions (development and TV/online production), thanks to the strengthening of the relevant eligibility and evaluation criteria (e.g. only co-development projects involving producers from different countries can be supported under CE2, while single-country development projects were eligible under CE1). Even single-beneficiary slate funding has supported a very high share of coproductions (87-90% of all funded projects). 50

In addition to the production sector, MEDIA funding has made a positive difference in EU distribution capacity, i.e. EU capabilities to distribute films from MEDIA-associated countries beyond national borders. MEDIA helped distribution companies sell 77 out of 100 tickets for films in non-national countries between 2013 and 2019. After the United Kingdom left the European Union (coinciding with the start of CE2) this number became even higher.

While there is a significant share of recurrent applications, there is also evidence of distributors growing as a result of support. From 2014 to 2023, 477 distributors got support from MEDIA under the automatic (non-selective) actions. 71 of these companies applied every year over this period. COVID lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 caused a major drop in film sales. In 2022, 71% of beneficiaries earned less money than they did in 2017. MEDIA helped these companies stay afloat during this hard time. Out of a group of beneficiaries who applied before and after COVID, 60% had grew their position in the market of non-national EU films, and this includes 26% of beneficiaries who more than doubled their shares. 51

Distribution support under MEDIA also helped create some new jobs, though on average, each company created less than one new job. This figure suggests that, while the distribution-related support has facilitated some job creation, the overall impact in terms of job creation has been modest. MEDIA does not pay for staff costs, which may explain the small number of newly created jobs.

Also, several horizontal actions were funded to strengthen the business capacity of audiovisual market players in addition to the above detailed support to the creation and distribution of specific works. The actions on audiovisual markets increased opportunities for audiovisual producers and distributors to collaborate across borders, thus contributing to cross-border circulation of works. For example, in audiovisual markets producers can pitch their upcoming works to distributors who may then acquire the rights for their distribution. Producers may also come together to launch co-productions. MEDIA has financed the hosting of these markets and related networking activities, including on specific formats such as documentaries. MEDIA has also hosted Stands in major markets, providing accreditations and networking space. Under CE1, there were 670,000 participants in market access activities. under CE 2, as of 2021 approximately 152,000 participants were supported. Despite this, as explained above, the target of 1.8 million set under the corresponding monitoring indicator (number of people reached by B2B promotional activities in major markets) may not be met, as COVID has changed habits as regards attending events.

A new scaled-up action, MEDIA 360, was launched under CE2 focusing on the major industry hubs, with the intention of supporting strategic programmes of activities that could have a structuring effect on Europe’s audiovisual ecosystem as a whole, but it is too early to assess impacts. To date nine projects involving 13 beneficiary organisations have been made under this action totalling EUR 19,938,967. Projects so far typically focus on integrated training, networking, business to business and distribution activities, as well as targeted development and international co-production support in some cases. Data on outputs and results from funded projects is not yet available and impacts will need to be assessed once projects have been completed.

Another new action under CE1, Innovative Tools and Business Models attracted a lot of interest and supported promising projects, but it is again too early to assess the impact of the innovations covered by funding. This new action supports innovative solutions to the main digital challenges of the European audiovisual industry, such as financing, visibility, availability and digital consumption of European works. Projects are primarily focused on analytics and AI tools to support production, marketing and subscription models. However, the results and impacts of projects are not yet available at this early stage. This action currently does not have a formal KPI in the monitoring framework. The number of active business users of the funded tools after 3 and/or 5 years of funding could be a relevant indicator, but this would require beneficiaries reporting for 3 to 5 years on their active users. Also, more automatization of collecting data on the purpose of the supported tools may be considered (e.g. which stage of the audiovisual works life cycle do they aim to improve?).

Furthermore, both CE1 and CE2 have addressed priorities relating to capacity and skills development of professionals with an increased emphasis on the skills needed to harness the digital transformation and promote new business models under the current Programme. 52  The Programmes supported a total of 14,959 training participants of which 13,478 were under CE1 (average of 46 participants per projects) and 1,646 through CE2 (average of 55 per project). The lower figures are due to a certain extent the impact of COVID.

While the formal monitoring indicator based on self-assessment of participants is on track to be met (see above), monitoring of results or impacts of training on competences and employability is weak, though it has improved under CE2. Two thirds of the supported projects across both Programmes did not record data from participants on the outcomes of the trainings provided. Under CE1, 27.19% of the total participants reported outcomes, showing that 88% of the participants used the learning acquired through MEDIA in their work. Under CE2, 71.39 % of the participants reported learning outcomes, indicating that 71% of the participants improved their competencies or increased their employability. Feedback from the beneficiaries’ survey is also positive: 81% of respondents under CE1 and 84% of respondents under CE2 point towards developed new skills and competences.

Positive feedback from beneficiaries notwithstanding, the action had to be adjusted half-way under CE2 to enhance its relevance and coherence with the new legal base. MEDIA Skills development support appears to have been delivered in line with objectives under CE1. However, an internal assessment carried out by DG CNECT on the selected projects under CE2 showed that a significant number of projects prioritised the creation and production stages. Digital and greening transformations lacked sufficient focus: overall, these priorities were not at the core of the funded training initiatives (only 2 out of the 59 funded projects under CE2 focused on the greening of the industry). Finally, a certain degree of overlap was detected between the Talent and Skills and the audiovisual Market actions, as both addressed knowledge sharing and networking activities. In the light of these findings, the call on Talent and Development Action was streamlined in 2024, with a stronger focus on addressing skills’ gaps in the digital age, developing new business models, enhancing IP rights exploitation, and promoting sustainable practices across the value chain, encouraging participation of professionals across the audiovisual and gaming value chains. Support to networking activities among professionals was included under a revamped action on Markets and Networking.

Overall, both the public consultation and beneficiary survey confirmed convincingly the positive impact of MEDIA funding on competitiveness of funded enterprises under both CE1 and CE2. 57% of CE1 beneficiaries and 81% of CE2 MEDIA beneficiaries agreed that MEDIA was effective in supporting competitiveness in general. This view was shared by less, though still a majority (60%) of distribution support beneficiaries. As regards the impact on their own activities, the two aspects of competitiveness where MEDIA support was considered strongest was increased visibility for the beneficiary’s work in the sector and increased capacity for transnational cooperation with 94% and 89% of MEDIA beneficiaries reporting positive impacts. These results are comparable across both Programmes. Again, the results were weaker among distribution than content creation beneficiaries, but still mostly positive. It is notable that the survey confirmed the strongest positive impact in the two areas where the quantitative findings also showed strong impacts (addressable demand and co-productions). Overall, 90% and 85% of CE1 and CE2 MEDIA beneficiaries respectively reported a moderate to significant impact of MEDIA funding on helping them increase their market position and/or financial turnover. A similar share of beneficiaries reported moderate to significant impact on job creation, without major differences across the two Programmes.

Despite the positive impact of MEDIA funding in helping beneficiaries become more competitive, there are significant limits to what MEDIA could achieve in the wider market context, as market share metrics show. MEDIA support is associated with wider transnational circulation and consumption of European audiovisual works, supported a number of co-productions significantly above the market average, and supported many internationally acclaimed works. Despite this, the overall market share of non-national EU audiovisual works has not improved over the evaluation period. In particular, non-national EU works account for 6% of cinema admissions and 7% viewing time on EU streaming services (the latter a decrease from 11% in 2020). US works by contrast account for around 61% VoD view time and 66% of admissions 53 .

The funding under MEDIA (roughly 200 million annually even under the increased budget of CE2) is very modest compared to the overall audiovisual sector (worth around EUR 100 billion in the EU) and cannot in itself change the strong market trends in the sector and the wider attention economy.  The latter include changing consumer behaviours, the behaviour of major US studios, streamers and tech companies or EU broadcasters and national authorities. The results of the counterfactual analysis on streaming views of supported works and the decreasing views for EU works despite MEDIA funding are a case in point: the recommendations within streaming services are one of the top influences on viewing behaviour, based on consumer surveys 54 , and these are at the discretion of the services themselves. Less than 20% of streaming subscriptions are for EU streaming services, which means that extra-EU companies have a very strong influence on what type of content people in the EU consume.

Finally, the audiovisual sector is heavily dependent on public funding, and MEDIA is only a fraction of total national funding. Public funding is the leading source of finance for films and second most important source for series. Public service broadcasters commission over half of broadcast fiction titles. Even the increased annual MEDIA budget under CE2 was less than 1% 55 of the total national funding to public sector broadcasting in the EU (2021-2023). 56 This does not include direct grants given by national film funds or tax benefits. In effect this means that non-national works targeted by MEDIA not only have to compete for audiences’ attention with US and other international works, but also national works supported from (in aggregate much higher levels of) national funding.  

Level-playing field: geographic and linguistic diversity 

In 2021 the first Work Programme of CE2 introduced a renewed and streamlined set of level playing field (LPF) measures to be taken, using eligibility and award criteria. Overall, there was a stronger emphasis on collaboration with opportunities for mutual learning between companies from countries with different capacities. This section looks at the two relevant performance indicators (supported co-productions involving a low-capacity country and works supported in lesser used languages) and then presents further data and analysis on the level playing field, geographic and linguistic diversity.

A strong positive development can be observed in co-productions involving high and low audiovisual capacity countries, driven by targeted measures in content creation support under CE2. Under CE2 there has been a notable increase in the share of support for titles that involve collaboration between high and low-capacity countries. The share of all supported works across all content and distribution actions that involve collaborations between low capacity and high-capacity countries has increased from less than 5% during CE1 to around 30% under CE2. This increase has been driven by the higher share of support through content actions and associated eligibility and evaluation criteria related to beneficiaries from lower capacity countries within these actions, including a new specific development action supporting slates of producers from low-capacity countries. This notwithstanding, the level of involvement of partners from low-capacity countries can vary.

There has also been a notable increase in recent years in the share of works in lesser used languages developed, produced and distributed with MEDIA support. Under the previous iteration of the Programme typically around 25% of supported works were in lesser used languages. Under the current Programme, this is just over 30%. 57

Horizontal audience development support under MEDIA also had a positive impact on geographic and linguistic diversity. 

·The Europa Cinemas network implements a positive action for cultural diversity promoting films in lesser-used languages. The screenings cover hundreds of films from almost all MEDIA countries (depending on the year), with for example 9 countries being represented among the top 20 most screened titles in 2023.

·As regards festivals, recent third-party analysis 58 shows that smaller festivals which are the target of MEDIA’s festival support, especially the network of festivals action, show a higher share of films from smaller countries than the large, well-known festivals (Cannes, Berlin etc).  The geographical distribution of the festivals supported under MEDIA has improved through the support to networks of festivals introduced under CE2. The outreach of the networks presents a very diverse geographical distribution (26 European countries in total). Altogether, over 13,000 films from low-capacity countries were programmed at supported festivals.

In training and skills development actions, countries with low audiovisual production capacity are also relatively well represented. Although data was not collected on the geographic background of participants, in CE1, projects coordinated by organisations from lower capacity countries received 29% of funding and in CE2 they received 32% of the funding. 

Despite these measures, support is concentrated in a limited number of countries and languages (see figure below), though the gap has narrowed. Under the previous Programme higher capacity countries received on average EUR 0.36 per capita, compared to EUR 0.23 per capita for low capacity countries. Under the current Programme, higher capacity countries have received EUR 0.48 per capita, a 34% increase, whilst lower capacity have received on average, EUR 0.35 per capita, a 54% increase. Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands are amongst the top beneficiaries and receive more per capita than bigger countries such as Germany, Italy and Spain.

MEDIA funding per Member State – Overview based on direct beneficiaries

MEDIA funding per Member State – Overview including split among indirect beneficiaries where relevant 59

For a number of reasons, the largest volume of funding continues to go to France. The French audiovisual sector benefits from a particularly favourable environment, with high cinema density and audiences combined with strong domestic funding notably for the production of content. It also has regular co-productions with neighbouring countries sharing the same language (BE and LU). Following Brexit, French sales agents are pre-eminent in the sale of foreign films across the EU. France also has the biggest audiences for non-national European films, meaning that French distributors gain the largest share of MEDIA support for distribution. 

Finally, despite the positive trend in co-productions, including between low and high-capacity countries, further analysis reveals room for improvement when it comes to diversity. Only one of the top ten most common cooperations was between two low-capacity countries. (between Czech Republic and Slovakia, which also share close cultural connections). Close geographic, linguistic and organisational links can be observed across the other most common cooperations, such as between Belgium and France, Denmark and Sweden and Austria and Germany. 60  Low-capacity countries were the primary production country in less than 10% of all supported co-productions between 2014 and 2023 61 . Indeed, cooperation with a lower capacity country can mean limited cooperation mainly only financing (e.g. the junior partner can bring national funding from their country) or providing services for location shooting in contrast to ‘genuine’ collaborations on creative aspects. The level of cooperation between different countries in supported works could be more explored for the final evaluation of CE2.

Overall, both CE1 and, in particular CE2, has resulted in significant developments in improving the level playing field across MEDIA countries. However, continuous efforts are needed for further improvements. Following the introduction of a development action dedicated entirely to low-capacity countries, a reform of the selective distribution action is underway. A recent study on the level playing field 62 provided a number of recommendations to increase the participation of lower capacity countries. These included expanding efforts to increase participation of low-capacity countries to actions beyond content creation, for example the training actions; and increase support for high quality co-development projects which involve creative collaborations between high and low-capacity countries. In addition, national support for the same works or activities could be taken into account when allocating funding for MEDIA.  This would require a closer mapping and monitoring of actions at Member State level. As currently information on Member State funding is not available in a standardised format that would lend itself well to further analysis, a first step could be to create a standardised monitoring framework. 

Horizontal priorities - Diversity and greening

Indicators show a positive association of MEDIA content creation funding with gender diversity and women are well represented in training actions as well. The share of MEDIA supported works written and directed by women exceeds industry-wide shares and has increased over time. The share of female directors and writers of works supported under content actions through Creative Europe 1 was 30% and 35% respectively. This has increased to 42% and 44% respectively under Creative Europe 2. These shares clearly exceed wider industry shares of women writers and directors, whilst the increase over time also reflects sector trends over this period. Collection of data on distribution titles was more limited. Of the 516 titles where gender data was recorded, 147 had a female director (28%) and 170 (33%) works were written by women. Data on other roles, e.g. producers or cinematographers, or workforce composition of beneficiary organisations is not collected. Furthermore, across both Programmes more than 50% of the participants in training actions were female. The share compares relatively well to industry shares of female participation. 63

Greening and diversity are consistently included in evaluation criteria of the development and TV/online actions and their weight in the scores is significant. For example, in TV/online scheme calls in recent years, each of these aspects weighed as much as the co-production criteria, which, as explained above, is central to MEDIA’s competitiveness approach. By way of another example, the twelve supported networks of festivals carry out collaborative projects to enhance research on sustainability and social awareness. Unfortunately, for the time being, no data is available for indicators other than female writers and directors, for measuring the impact of MEDIA in other aspects of diversity and greening. While these indicators can be developed for the final evaluation, the only reliable source for data would be additional and standardised reporting by beneficiaries (unlike for circulation and audiences of audiovisual works, there are no off-the-shelf external databases that could be used to check the impact without additional reporting obligations on beneficiaries).

Video games

Although most MEDIA financing targets the production and distribution of films and series, video games and new forms of interactive content (i.e. XR) are also supported through the Programme. This is, through a dedicated action devoted to the development of narrative video games and XR, and by making video games and XR eligible under MEDIA market and training and innovation actions.

Yearly support has increased under CE2. Altogether, a total of 307 development projects have been supported since 2014 for a total of EUR 37,298,747 over nine years. 207 projects were supported under CE1, in comparison with 100 projects in 2022-23 only (no call was launched in 2021 owing to the late adoption of the legal basis). The highest number of projects (56) were supported in 2023, reflecting a step increase in the budget under CE2.   The budget between 2014 and 2020 was relatively steady, with considerable growth in 2022. As a result, the funds awarded in 2023 were twice those awarded yearly between 2014 and 2020.

Support for video games is distributed geographically, encompassing most EU countries and reflecting the presence of dynamic gaming hubs across the EU. Over the 2014-2023 period, beneficiaries have come from 26 countries, including 23 EU Member States and 3 non-EU countries (Norway, Serbia, and the UK). The largest number of beneficiaries are from Germany, France, and Poland, followed by Denmark, Norway, and Italy. Countries considered to have low audiovisual capacity, such as Croatia and Lithuania, are well represented in the gaming sector, highlighting the different market realities between the gaming and films sectors.

MEDIA funding for game development significantly increases the chances of videogames being finalised and released. On average, 89% of development projects supported became prototypes3. A third of the supported projects were eventually commercialised. While there are no market-wide data on the failure rate of development projects, anecdotal evidence from national sources suggests that MEDIA results are significantly better than the market average, in particular in the indie games segment which MEDIA mostly provides for. It also underlines MEDIA’s ability to select viable projects.

Genre and budget may be relevant factors in success, but country of origin does not seem to matter. Among the unsuccessful projects, the predominant theme is “Adventure”, which might suggest a higher level of competition in this genre. Half of the abandoned projects had estimated development costs of under EUR 200,000, highlighting their small-scale nature – and therefore the relative fragility of these projects. However, the country of origin of the companies did not appear to influence a project's success.

MEDIA supported games are well recognised at prestigious industry awards. Between 2014 and 2020, 38 MEDIA supported games were nominated to a total of 175 awards across 20 different events, scooping 36 awards. This means that around 1 in 8 video games supported by MEDIA have been nominated for at least one award. In the five most prestigious ceremonies, they achieved 52 nominations and 12 wins. The most awarded games so far were “It takes two”, which scooped 12 wins, The Witcher Blood and Wine DLC – both scooping the “Game of the Year” award of the leading industry ceremony. The latter were big-budget games – The Witcher Blood and Wine DLC reportedly cost €72 million to produce.

MEDIA supported games are available on at least 18 different distribution platforms/devices, with the highest number of projects found on Windows, PS4, Xbox One, and Switch, mirroring the consumption patterns on the market. On average, each supported project anticipates being available on 3 different platforms/devices. In 2022 and 2023, this average increased to four platforms, with a notable rise in VR availability. This seems to show that over time the selected projects are making efforts to enhance their distribution channels and revenues streams.

Efficiency

As regards cost-effectiveness, MEDIA supported a large amount of audiovisual works, which resulted in a stronger cross-border cultural dimension. Across both Programmes MEDIA has supported a total of 7887 original unique titles (films and series). As shown under ‘Effectiveness’, MEDIA support is strongly associated with a much wider cross-border-circulation and significantly more non-national admissions that unsupported works. On aggregate, under CE1, MEDIA support was associated with an additional 241 million admissions and almost 13,000 cross-border releases compared to unsupported works. Based on works supported for content creation, MEDIA funding of EUR 236,006,151 attracted other sources of investment totalling EUR 1,754,327,546 (1:7.43) under CE1. For CE2, it is too early to make a similar calculation as the benefits of support will take more time to materialise. For distribution related support, the corresponding ratio is 1:2 64 . 

Supporting networking and market access has become a more cost-effective way to support competitiveness. Networking and market access projects were supported with a total of approximately 670,000 reported participants at an approximate cost of EUR 80 per person in CE 1. In CE 2, support for 76 Markets and networking projects was funded with a total of 150,000 participants to date. At EUR 57 per participant (2021 only), this represents a 26% decrease per participant. This was cost-effective in view of the benefits in presence of European audiovisual firms and works at major international film festivals creating business opportunities for collaboration.

Support to training sought to upgrade the creative, management and technical skills of audiovisual professionals, as well as fostering collaboration at the European level. Training was provided for over 13,000 participants (52% women) with 29% of training funding to beneficiary organisations based in LCC countries. The cost was approximately EUR 4,000 per participant. Under CE1, the cost per person amounted to EUR 3,932 while in 2021, under CE2, it totalled EUR 5,738 per person trained, a 46% increase per person trained in comparison to CE1. Such difference could be explained by the fact that a large majority of the training Programmes rely on in-person formats, including in prestigious film festivals and markets where the costs of attending those events in person have increased over the years, owing to rising travel expenses and accommodation costs. When the action was reviewed in 2024, the provision of hybrid training (both online and in-person) was encouraged, while travel and accommodation costs were kept to the strict minimum.

The support to innovative tools and business models was introduced in 2021 to foster solutions to the main challenges of the European audiovisual industry in the digital age. A total of EUR 29,258,510 across 43 projects and 62 beneficiary organisations has been awarded (average grant EUR 680,430). The total contribution by beneficiaries is EUR 27,177,426 (average EUR 632,033), showing a significant level of co-financing by the beneficiaries.

The EACEA efficiently implements the Programme. It has implemented MEDIA since well before 2014. It is a well-established centre of expertise with the necessary tools for administering about 2,000 projects per year, thus allowing DG CNECT to focus on policy-related activities. 65  The EACEA is implementing the large majority of the open calls for proposals of Creative Europe, including the publication of the calls, the management of the evaluations, the contracting and project follow-up. The EACEA is consistently reaching target KPIs on efficiency, with time to grant within 9 months, time to pay within the 30-60-day limits and an error rate well below 2%.

A number of efficiency-enhancing measures were taken during the evaluation period. During the 2014-2020 period, an online application and reporting system was implemented for all actions. The use of lump sums was introduced for three high volume actions such as the Single Development support, the Festival support and the Cinema Selective support. Lump sums were further extended as of 2021, including through budget-based lump (Lump sum type II). All 5 actions of the content cluster (European Co-Development, European Slate development, European mini-slate development, Video Games and Immersive content development, TV&Online content) and the Festival action are implemented through fixed or budget based lump sums since 2021, covering around 46% of all grants signed in the period 2021-2024.

The range of funding schemes has been implemented through a wide variety of modalities, with different levels of efficiency. For example, one of the most efficient schemes was the European Cinemas network, which was contracted through a single coordinating organisation, but which has used a cascading grants system to channel funding to over 1,300 member cinemas. This was a cost-effective solution because the administrative costs were reduced to a minimum as there was only one grant of EUR 10 million per year and three payments to be processed.

However other schemes were significantly more complex to administer. Therefore, the approach from 2014-2020 was to progressively streamline the schemes, in dialogue with industry and Member State stakeholders. In particular, the Distribution Automatic scheme was streamlined to consolidate small grants (per film) into larger allocations (per distributor) and also minimum project thresholds were introduced. Thus, the number of grant contracts fell from over 1,000 to approximately 300 annually. The Sales Agents scheme, which shared a similar operational structure with the Distribution Automatic scheme, was also streamlined.

The Distribution Selective scheme was revised to enable a more strategic approach to coordinating multi-territory film releases. This included the consolidation of grants into a support to third parties model coordinated by Sales agents, significantly reducing the amount of grant contracts required to support a comparable number of works. For example, the number of individual grants was reduced from on average 206 grants to an average 26 grants per year between 2014 to 2018, to an average of 21 grants to support 21 films per year for 2019 and 2020.

Overall, the impacts of these changes can be illustrated by the significantly reduced number of grants made to support comparable levels activity. The number of grants made in 2019 and 2020 was 785 and 806 in comparison to an average of 1475 project grants per year between 2014 to 2018, a 46% decrease. This resulted in an increased grant size, from EUR 53,000 in 2014 to EUR 165,000 in 2020.

However, other schemes could not be streamlined during CE1. The Development schemes (single, slate) attracted on average 900 applications per year, leading to 200 selected projects for an average grant of EUR 83,000. The selection process required the extensive use of experts. As of 2021, the development schemes have been refocused on bigger projects (co-productions and slates or groupings). The average number of proposals to be processed by the agency has therefore dropped from 915 proposals to 470 proposals / year in the 2021-2024 period. The average number of annual grants for these development actions has dropped from 215 during the 2014-2020 period to 178 in the 2014-2024 period, while the average grant amount was increased from EUR 83,000 to EUR 163,000.

Also as regards support to festivals, the provisions of the legal act did not allow reducing the number of grants over 2014-20. Over the period, 535 grant contracts were established with 123 organisations (recurrent beneficiaries received successive annual grants). However, as of 2021, the networked collaboration dimension was strengthened, notably through the new Festivals Network action which has alternated with the traditional support to individual festivals on a bi-annual basis. A total of 12 networks and grants were funded in 2022 and 15 in 2024, for a value of EUR 5.6 million in 2022 and EUR 7.9 million in 2024. In parallel, the total amount of funding awarded to individual film festivals in 2021 and 2023 was over EUR 19 million with an average grant amount of EUR 103,059 for a period of two years. This compares to an average of EUR 45,397 under the previous Programme when grants were awarded for a period of one year.

Overall, since 2021 the number of calls per year has been reduced further to an average of 14 annual calls and 16 selection rounds (compared to an average of 16 calls and 20 selection rounds in the previous period), through streamlining and multi-annual programming. As part of this the average duration of the grants has now increased from 1.5 years under the predecessor Programme to over 2 years 66 under the current Programme, 67 effectively reducing the administrative burden associated with more frequent applications by around 40%. 68 .

The increased use of multi-annual funding and cascading grants has further increased average grant for projects, under CE2. The shift towards larger and longer grants was acknowledged and welcomed by stakeholders as strengthening their capacity.

Some actions with particularly competitive calls had lower than average success rates as of 2023. These therefore need to be monitored closely to assess if eligibility criteria need to be adapted in order to filter the relevant proposals at early stage, or if the budget allocation can be increased, in order to avoid unnecessary applications, which are costly both for the applicant and the Programme administration. This concerns in particular the following schemes: European Video-Games and Immersive content: success rate in 2024 was 16.7% (vs 58% in 2022); European Co-Development success rate in 2024 was 20% (vs 41% in 2021); Innovative Tools and business models success rate in 2024 was 11% (vs 45% in 2021).

Given the need for increased focus on monitoring set out in this evaluation, additional human resources may need to be reallocated through efficiency savings on project selection and execution.

Coherence

There is good coherence between the general objectives, specific objectives and priorities of the strand. The MEDIA strand actions in CE1 directly supported the priorities by facilitating the transnational distribution and promotion of European audiovisual works. Under CE2, new and revamped actions (e.g. games and immersive content, innovative tools), reflect the new strand priorities responding to the evolving digital environment. The support to competitiveness is reflected in the specific objectives of scalability and cooperation and the focus on international co-productions. The introduction of MediaInvest, a European equity investment vehicle, reflects the priority of boosting private investment in audiovisual and gaming.

The MEDIA strand is coherent with EU policies and initiatives related to the European AV sector, namely the Media and Audiovisual Action Plan (MAAP), the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), the copyright framework and the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA). The MEDIA strand accompanies the objectives of the AVMSD, which ensures the free provision of audiovisual services in the single market, as well as promoting European works, enhancing cultural diversity and media pluralism. Notably, MEDIA strengthens the capacity of the EU audiovisual industry to produce audiovisual works which can be successful across the single market. Also, MEDIA requires alignment of third countries with the provisions of the AVMSD. MEDIA also funds the functioning of the European Board for Media Services established by the EMFA.

The objectives of the MEDIA Programme are also well aligned with the objectives of the 2019 Digital Single Market Copyright Directive, in particular with regard to supporting content creation in the digital age and its access across-borders.

MEDIA is complementary to national support under the RRF and Cohesion Policy. A few Member States included provisions in their Recovery and Resilience Plans to use RRF funding to support the AV industries. When used, it has focused mainly on boosting national production and attracting overseas productions, with limited attention paid to priorities related to the Single Market. Also, Cohesion Policy appears focused on the regional dimension through digital, cultural and the business development. Examples of these investments include the setup of an open platform in Poland to access digitalised heritage films (digital), refurbishment of cinema venues in Hungary (culture), and a videogames cluster in Croatia (business development). 

Support to videogames cuts across different EU programmes. Video gaming has established itself as a key economic and cultural activity in the EU, underpinned by both creative and technological advancements. While Creative Europe supports the early-stage development of specific video game products, Horizon Europe’s action aims to support research that addresses the potential role and scope of the video game value chain and industry, including the application of video game technology to other sectors, areas that are not currently addressed by the MEDIA strand.

Views from stakeholders representing the sector as well as beneficiaries of projects supported by the MEDIA strand suggest that there is less awareness of other relevant EU funding sources. The beneficiary survey showed that 57% of respondents under both funding periods felt that the MEDIA strand was complementary to other EU funding opportunities, but 40% indicated they did not know. Sectoral organisations interviewed elaborated further, suggesting that while funding programmes like Horizon Europe could be relevant for R&I in the AV sector, many organisations are either not aware of these opportunities or the calls are too technical for MEDIA beneficiaries, mostly producers and distributors.

As regards Member State programmes, most of the support available to the AV sector at the national level focuses on the production of content. 69 Although the majority of Member States have support for the development of AV works, the scale and scope of this support is limited, with focus primarily on national works, whilst MEDIA focuses on co-productions. MEDIA support to distribution helps Member States to effectively promote their works outside their home markets. Nonetheless, “international promotion” (export) measures have been developed in some member states e.g. in FR, DE, IT, AT, NO and FI), calling for increased synergies between national and European support.

Furthermore, the scale of domestic support for AV sectors is uneven across Member States. For example, public service broadcasters in Europe commission half of the fiction titles for TV and streaming 70 , but there are enormous differences in their funding. For example, Romanian public service television receives around EUR 22 per household in public funding, while the same amount is EUR 158 for Danish public broadcasting. 71

4.1.2.Culture

Effectiveness

Creative Europe 1, Culture Sub-programme

The Culture Sub-programme invested EUR 439 million over the years 2014-2020 to support the CCS in the EU and third countries associated to the Programme. In total, it supported 1,213 individual projects involving 4,375 beneficiary organisations and more than 7,500 cultural activities 72 with a strong focus on a transnational approach (98% of projects having a cross-border component). A typical transnational project involved around 10 partners from 8 different countries working together for up to 3 years. The results of the Beneficiary Survey conducted for the evaluation found that 8 in 10 partnerships formed under CE 1 continued after the funding period, because of the benefits participating cultural organisations had gained from these collaborations.

The Culture Sub-programme’s strong international focus is visible in all its actions, in particular in the support to European Cooperation Projects. This action financed 491 small-scale projects and 128 large-scale projects, all of them with cross-border collaboration, bringing about many benefits for project partners from various CSS. Firstly, transnational work helped internationalise careers of the artists and cultural professionals involved, as well as the circulation of their works. In line with its specific objective, the Culture Sub-programme supported in this way the mobility of artists and cultural and creative professionals. To capture the scale of this mobility a corresponding indicator was added in 2019: “the number of artists and cultural and creative professionals geographically mobile beyond national borders due to the Culture Sub-programme support, by country of origin and gender”. From 2014 to 2020, the Sub-programme supported 22,763 professionals internationalise their careers and gain experience in other countries, corresponding to a total of 296,083 mobility days. However, for CE1, the country of origin and gender of beneficiaries were not collected, but this was remedied in CE2.

The Sub-programme also funded 660 artistic residencies to support professionals to work abroad and enhance their capacity to operate internationally. According to a Beneficiary Survey, 64% of those who received this support said it directly helped them advance their careers in an industry that remains very competitive. This career advancement was particularly apparent in terms of helping participants develop new international networks, foreign contracts and reach new audiences outside of their home country, increasing in this way their competitiveness. 65% of respondents highlighted that the support had a significant impact on the increase of their mobility and the internationalisation of their careers. Participation in cross-border mobility also contributed to increase cultural operators’ sense of belonging to a common cultural area.

The Sub-programme helped in building the capacity of the CCS, which is very relevant as these sectors are composed of 95% of small and micro-organisations, often lacking the capacity to capture key market opportunities. As a token of this endeavour, the Sub-programme invested EUR 80 million in 23 pan-European Networks between 2014-2016 (and 28 between 2017-2020) covering different CCS such as cultural heritage, music or performing arts. It also supported 8 European Platforms up to 2016 (and then 15 from 2017-2020), that promoted over 6,000 emerging artists. In particular, the Networks provided their members with business-to-business capacity building activities across a large range of subjects, from how to market works abroad, greening their activities, how to reach disadvantaged or underrepresented groups, through to developing funding applications and developing managerial capacity. The capacity-building support funded over the period was particularly impactful in terms of helping the sectors develop new digital skills among practitioners and helping to integrate digital technology into cultural production and dissemination. These new skills manifested themselves in many innovative projects ranging from virtual museum tours and online exhibitions to the creation of cultural smart phone apps to enable audiences to interactively access cultural works. The above-mentioned networks do not collect data on the extent to which their capacity-building work helped supported organisations to grow (e.g. create additional contracts). However, 87% of respondents to the Beneficiary Survey said that capacity-building support had an impact in terms of helping them develop skills to work transnationally, with around 70% saying it had either a major or significant impact.

The Culture Sub-programme also supported projects in reaching audiences, and in particular new audiences that generally do not engage with culture. Monitoring data show that one in four projects had a specific focus on reaching an underrepresented group, including minority ethnic groups, younger people and migrants, with 76% of projects being effective in reaching audiences that do not tend to visit, watch or consume culture.

Number of actions focusing on social inclusion/diversity themes per action

Source: Ecorys, based on Creative Europe Programme monitoring data

More generally on outreach, data shows that cultural content supported through the Sub-programme was accessed by an extremely high number of people. Projects recorded how many times people consumed cultural content including those watching, visiting, listening and viewing cultural activity funded. This data shows that cultural activity was accessed (either virtually or in person) 91.5 million times over the course of 2014-2020 highlighting how the strand stimulated mass participation in culture during this period 73 . A practical example of how the Sub-programme supported access to culture is through the action dedicated to promoting the circulation of European literary works. A budget of EUR 14.7 million was redistributed to 431 projects in the book and publishing sector, resulting in over 3,500 translations of literary works, from around 40 source languages into 30 target languages. Moreover, 70% of the translated languages are coming from “smaller” languages, contributing to the objectives of increased access for EU people to a diversity of works and answering the objectives to support cultural diversity. 74  It is also worthy to include the results of other distinct actions supported by the Programme, such as the European Capitals of Culture. It is estimated that the average number of visitors of European Capitals of Culture is 2,138,825 per title holder. 75   

Finally, the Sub-programme contributed to the overall EU strategy for cultural diplomacy thanks to its large reach, with 15 participating non-EU countries. Organisations involved in international projects highlighted how the support from Creative Europe helped to cover the additional costs resulting from showcasing their work in non-EU countries, such as transportation of materials, translation, and travel costs (especially when a large number of artists are involved such as is the case for orchestras). With a contribution of EUR 5 million from IPAIII funds, a special call for Western Balkans was published in 2019 on the same model as for the European Cooperation projects, resulting in the selection of 13 projects. As a whole, the Sub-programme funded 444 projects involving 375 organisations located in non-EU countries.

Distribution of support between EU Member States

Total EU funding per Member State in the Culture sub-Programme in CE1

Source: Creative Europe programme monitoring data supplied by EACEA. EU grant awarded by country (coordinators and partners).

It should be noted that Creative Europe does not feature pre-allocated envelopes of funding for different Member States. The Programme is based on the principle of excellence meaning that the selection of projects to be funded will depend on their quality whichever the country of origin of the applicant organisations. The allocation of funding through the different grants awarded is influenced by several factors including the size of the countries’ CCS, their vitality and the level of national support or lack of it. Some European countries act as geographical hubs (e.g., Belgium) for wider partnerships. Through its international cooperation component, the Programme allows for organisations from countries with less-established CCS to cooperate with organisations from those European cultural hubs.

The data from CE1 show that the Programme supported over 1 200 international projects with 65.3% of them demonstrating a strong emphasis on cross-border collaboration. In turn, these projects created over 7,500 cultural activities. This illustrates how the strand was a key driver of new cultural content within the EU. The Culture Sub-programme provided support, often to small and fledgling organisations, to help beneficiaries capture the opportunities that international work provides, including stronger professional networks and much larger foreign audiences. There is strong evidence that the Culture sub-Programme directly contributed to greater opportunities for cross-border collaboration by funding projects built upon cross-border partnerships. 76  While acting with a limited budget, the Culture Sub-programme of CE1 contributed to ensuring cooperation, joint creation and production of innovative works and continuous upskilling of the professionals of the sectors, thus increasing their competitiveness and their work’s singularity within their sector. As such, the Sub-programme addressed the fragmentation of the cultural sector, provided a platform for numerous projects but has also ensured inclusivity by integrating a wider set of countries into these networks. These are key elements towards the Programme’s general objective of competitiveness, notably through skills and methodology development to encourage transformation and innovation.

Creative Europe 2, Culture strand

Over the period 2021-2023, the Culture strand invested EUR 294 million, supporting 630 projects involving 2,176 beneficiary organisations had a strong transnational approach, with 94% of projects having a cross-border component. In addition, it has been observed that the cooperation between partners tends to continue after the funded project has been finalised, according to 72% of the Programme’s beneficiaries. The strand also supports the implementation of a new mobility scheme for artists and cultural professionals, as well as four prizes in the fields of architecture, music, literature and cultural heritage.

Mobility

The Culture strand continues supporting the mobility of artists and cultural professionals in CE2 to allow them to develop their careers at a European level. Although there is a specific Programme indicator in CE2 dedicated to mobility, results are currently incomplete. Data will be collected based on the final reports submitted by the projects once completed (many projects have a duration of four years). For more details, please consult Annex VII. However, as a way to reinforce the Programme’s support for mobility beyond national borders, in particular individual mobility, a new action s Culture Moves Europe has been introduced in CE2, for which some figures are already available. This scheme, launched in October 2022, supported the mobility of 3,049 artists and the creation of 202 artist residencies accommodating 772 individual artists over the years 2022 and 2023.In CE2, Culture Moves Europe alone supported 162,678 days of mobility. A survey on 1,159 completed mobility projects under the scheme shows that 97% of grantees pursue further international mobility, 85% develop new outlets, distributors, exhibitors, or audiences as a direct result of their mobility and 76% receive job offers, new contracts, or new project opportunities stemming from their mobility experience. Additionally, 72% of grantees indicated engaging in new co-productions or co-creations due to their mobility beyond the period of the project.

Those results, in line with the intervention logic, directly contributed to the increased capacity of CCS to operate at an international level and indirectly to job creation.

Similar results (although not always yet fully measured) were reported in other key schemes of the strand, including Perform Europe (tested under CE1 77 and developed into a fully-fledged action in CE2) and the various cultural prizes supported under both iterations of Creative Europe. Although prize holders cannot quantify the impact, most highlight that this increased exposure for their work directly impacted on the number of contracts and commissions, particularly outside of their own country. This increase in the demand for their works is particularly welcomed as most prize holders highlight how their fields are particularly competitive, meaning a prize gives them a commercial platform from which to build their careers. The prize for literature has enabled 189 emerging writers from 41 countries to make a name for themselves thanks to translation into several languages that will not be possible without the visibility of the prize.

Development of skills in the CCS

Similarly to CE1, the development of skills and competences in the CCS remain a priority of the Culture strand in CE2. Evidence shows that the strand has been effective in supporting the development of skills and competencies of artists and cultural and creative professionals. Research found that 3,647 participants so far have been involved in learning activities and considered that this support had improved their competencies and increased their employability. Moreover, in 2021-2023, the strand continued funding 37 Networks (with an envelope of EUR 27.6 million), representing more than 4,000 organisations covering all partner countries and more. Over the same period, it supported 16 Platforms (with an envelope of EUR 33.5 million), representing 316 member organisations coming from 38 countries and promoting and helping 3,200 emerging artists. Both the Networks and the Platforms provide capacity-building activities as described in the section above on CE 1. Finally, under a new multi-annual action called “Pan-European Cultural Entities”, the Culture strand funds four pan-European orchestras, which have so far supported 600 emerging artists from over 20 countries, helping them in their transition from education to professional life. All the capacity-building efforts of the Culture strand are corroborated by the results of the Beneficiary Survey, in which three out of four respondents said that the strand has a positive impact in terms of upskilling and reskilling their competencies.

Promoting social resilience and social inclusion

The Culture strand has so far invested EUR 50.7 million in cooperation projects where social inclusion and intercultural dialogue was identified as a priority. 78 Although data on how many individuals from socially excluded groups have accessed support from the Programme is not yet available, interviews with projects as well as desk research show that many funded projects focus on societal issues such as exclusion, poverty, racial hatred, inequality, violence and isolation. Perform Europe, which supports cross-border touring within the performing arts sector, through its particular emphasis on inclusivity and fairness, is a good example of this endeavour. This scheme has so far supported 250 performances and 42 transnational partnerships. According to the Beneficiary Survey, 81% of projects said that the Culture strand was helping them address social inclusion challenges through the cultural activity supported. As was already the case under the first iteration of the Programme, CE 2 prioritises support for non-traditional players in the cultural field including grass-roots community organisations and those who have close links to disadvantaged groups. The intense level of cross-border collaboration (2,500 partners so far involved in international projects under CE 2) has led to high levels of intercultural dialogue taking place across different countries on projects often with a focus on key social themes, including diversity and equality. This contribution of the Programme in the promotion of societal resilience and social inclusion is particularly illustrated by Programme KPI 4.

Participation of third countries

As was the case under CE 1, the Culture strand continues supporting the Union’s global strategy for international relations, 79  with a total of 372 projects involving third-country organisations over 2021-2023. 80 This data is collected under Programme KPI 3. This represents 20% of the projects funded under the Culture strand. Although it is difficult to measure the impact of this work in terms of strengthened international relations (particularly at this early stage of implementation of the Programme), stakeholders highlighted how the Culture strand was providing a cultural dimension to international cooperation and helping to build (cultural) bridges between the EU and the rest of the world. In addition, the Culture strand has shown its ability to respond to international emergencies, notably the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, by publishing a EUR 5.0 million budgeted special call aiming to support Ukrainian CCS, resulting in the selection of three consortia that redistributed funding to organisations on the ground.

Distribution of support between cultural and creative sectors

The Culture strand supported a wide variety of CCS. Monitoring data highlight that funding has so far been distributed across 22 sectors (with the previous iteration of the Programme showing very similar patterns) and that music, art in public spaces, theatre and cultural tangible and intangible heritage have received most of the support. The distribution of funding across sectors generally reflects the make-up of the overall CCS in the EU with the largest sectors (in terms of employment) receiving the largest share of funding, with no sector receiving a disproportionate amount of funding.

Distribution of support between EU Member States

In terms of the geographical distribution of funding, the main countries benefitting from the support are France, Italy, Germany and Belgium (with Belgium being prominent because many pan-EU organisations are located there while they have a pan-European reach covering many participating countries). Together these four countries received around a third of the Culture strand funding across both Programme periods, with Spain, Slovenia and Austria also getting a notable share of the support distributed. The graph below shows that there is a slight difference between CE1 and CE2: although data for CE2 only goes up until 2023 there is evidence that countries with a relatively smaller number of professionals and organisations, such as Denmark, Lithuania and Bulgaria are starting to comparatively receive a higher share of support from the Programme. The total funding per EU Member State and Programme period is as indicated in the following figure.

Total EU funding per Member State in the Culture strand in CE2

Source: Creative Europe Programme monitoring data supplied by EACEA. EU grant awarded by country (coordinators and partners). Data cover projects contracted under calls 2012 to 2023.

As was already the case in CE1, CE2 does not feature pre-allocated envelopes of funding for different participating countries. Even if the distribution of funding above displays that the size of country’s CCS remains a strong influence on the redistribution of funding through the different grants of the Culture strand, there is a notable shift in the geography of collaboration. France is not the main receiver of funding anymore, while Belgium confirms its status as a hub for Culture projects (Particularly for Networks and Platforms, but which can redistribute budget through cascading grants with actions such as Perform Europe or the above-mentioned Platforms).

CE 2 has demonstrated an even stronger emphasis on cross-border collaborations, with an increase in the proportion of projects with an explicit cross-border component reaching 83.1% in CE 2. The data also indicates that CE 2 projects involve a higher average number of partners and countries compared to CE 1, suggesting an evolution towards larger and potentially more complex networks. It is noticeable that in Creative Europe 2 there is also some evidence that countries with a smaller number of professionals and organisations, such as Denmark, Lithuania and Bulgaria are starting to comparatively receive a higher share of support from the Programme. A shift in the geography of collaboration has also been noticed, with some new countries, such as Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia, playing a more prominent role in CE 2 compared to CE 1, while the UK, a key player in CE 1, is absent post-Brexit. 81  

Building on CE1’s successes, the Culture strand of CE2 further develops its role in fostering cooperation, joint creation and production of innovative works, thus tackling the fragmentation of the sector. Its actions further contribute to the mobility and continuous upskilling of the professionals of the sectors while encouraging knowledge-sharing among them. Consequently, the strand plays its role in answering the Programme’s general objective of competitiveness regarding the CCS and their professionals.

Efficiency

Creative Europe 1, Culture Sub-programme

The impact and benefits of the Culture Sub-programme in relation to the CCS are not always easily quantifiable due to the difficulty of monitoring such segmented sectors and considering the (relatively) limited budget of the strand. In fact, with a small budget and limited Full Time Equivalents (FTEs) involved (for example 37 FTEs in 2019 and 39 in 2020 in EACEA), the Culture Sub-programme cannot claim to have a structuring impact on the many sectors covered and in all the participating countries, going beyond the funded organisations themselves. Nevertheless, the overall resources distributed through the CE1’s Culture Sub-programme appear to be proportionate and efficient at delivering the range of intended results and impacts.

Potential means to increase efficiencies in the delivery of the Culture Sub-programme were identified over the 2014-2020 period. The Impact Assessment accompanying the Commission’s Proposal for a Regulation establishing the successor to the 2014-2020 Creative Europe Programme also indicated that the large volume of small grants, while having the advantage of supporting many small beneficiaries and activities, “created high administrative costs with time and effort focused on processing calls for proposals and transactions”. The CE1 regulation specified that the financial contribution from the Programme should be a maximum of 80 % of the costs of the operations supported, and it appears that over the period the Culture Sub-programme's average co-financing rate was 54%. Overall, the average grant amount was EUR 279,466, while the median grant was EUR 196,406. On average, the duration of projects (and associated grants) under CE1 was of 22.7 months. Finally, 3,194 unique organisations throughout the different CCS were supported.

The main action of the Culture Sub-programme is the support for Cooperation projects, which represent 63.5% of its available budget. This scheme funds a broad scale of transnational projects for cultural and creative organisations with a lump sum payment. Submitted projects were either small-scale (at least 3 different organisations in min. 3 different countries; maximum grant of EUR 200,000 representing 60% of eligible costs) or large-scale (at least 6 different organisations in min. 6 different countries; maximum grant of EUR 2 million representing 50% of eligible costs). Under the Sub-programme, a total of EUR 290,024,012 was awarded to 619 cooperation projects: 491 small-scale projects with an average grant of EUR 187,911, and 128 large-scale projects receiving an average grant of EUR 1,544,997. The average number of partners for this action was 5.8 organisations, which highlights the important gap between the two categories. This has been taken into account in the design of the continuation of the action under CE2 with the addition of a third, medium-scale category.

Under CE1, the Networks action redistributed a total of EUR 40,161,020 through 181 grants, with an average grant of EUR 262,490. The Platforms action redistributed EUR 39,974,713 through 81 grants, with an average grant of EUR 493,595. Under CE1, calls for Platforms and Networks were published on an annual basis, which was not efficient and was therefore corrected under CE2.

The support to literary translation projects was the Sub-programme's smallest scheme by volume of funding (on average EUR 3.5 million per year in 2014-2020) and average grant size, but it was the second largest by the number of projects (431). The action redistributed EUR 24,357,222 in grants to 222 organisations. In CE1, the action was divided into two types, the framework partnership agreements and the two-years projects, which respectively had average project grants of EUR 78,255 and EUR 49,993 (combined average of EUR 55,935).

Under CE1, a total of 5,640 eligible proposals were submitted to the different calls published by the Culture Sub-programme, which had an average success rate of 55%. The majority of the submitted proposals concerned the main action of the Sub-programme, i.e. Cooperation Projects, which had a success rate of 20% for smaller-scale projects and 23% for larger-scale projects. Nevertheless, the success rates over the period improved, rising from a low of 14% in 2014 and 2015 up to 30 and 32% in 2020 due to changes in the eligibility criteria introduced in 2018. The support to literary translation had a success rate of 32.35% during the overall period for the two-years projects and 88% for the framework partnership agreements. The Networks action boasted a success rate of 91.7%, while the Platforms action had a success rate of 72.5%.

Creative Europe 2, Culture strand

Reflecting (but only to some extent) the increase in the budget and therefore in the associated expectations, the number of human resources dedicated to the implementation of the Culture strand of CE2 in EACEA was slightly raised, reaching 43 FTEs in 2021, 45 in 2020 and 47 in 2023.

On implementation, based on feedback received on CE1, the Culture strand of CE2 has been adapted to introduce simplified forms of funding. More especially, this involved the introduction of Multi Annual Financing (MAF) arrangements in place of Framework Partnership agreements to reduce the volume of applications for multi-year projects. Previously for a 3-year Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA), the beneficiaries would have to make 3 applications and submit 3 reports. Since the introduction of multiannual commitments, each beneficiary now makes 1 application for a 3-year project and submits 3 reports, significantly reducing the number of applications and the associated volume of time spent on processing. In the Culture Strand, MAF was introduced for the Networks and Platforms actions.

In parallel, CE2 introduced a system of simplified grants, including lump sum grants and cascading grants. These changes have generally been viewed as important steps to ensure that the Programme is delivered in an efficient way, particularly given the generally limited financial and organisational capacity of CCS organisations. Cascading grants models were used for the Platforms action, the special action for the support to the Ukrainian CCS, Perform Europe, Culture Moves Europe and Music Moves Europe calls. In cascading grants, larger organisations selected through an open call for proposals receive a larger grant. This in turn is distributed through smaller grants to smaller organisations as well as individuals, thereby reducing the number of organisations that have to contract directly with the Commission, enabling greater flexibility and less paperwork for most beneficiaries.

These burden reduction and simplification measures contributed to a reduction in the average time to grants for beneficiaries. The average time to grant for Culture has reduced from 300 days in the first year of the new system (2021) to 238 days in 2023, which is nearly 30 days shorter than the average time under the previous Programme.

At the strand level, there is an overall trend for, on average, both larger and longer grants. In 2021-2023, the average amount awarded per grant across the whole strand was EUR 430,476, which is considerably higher than the average grant amount under CE1. The median grant under CE2 is EUR 199,998. This is at a similar level to the median grant awarded under the previous Programme. At the same time, the duration of projects (and associated grants) has increased to 28.8 months under CE 2. The larger grant sizes, longer time frames, as well as the use of cascading grants in certain actions are likely to have led to enhanced efficiency and impact of the projects supported. However, it is too early to fully assess the effectiveness of CE2 due to the extended duration of the projects in the absence of a critical mass of completed projects by end-2023. This is reflected for example in the incomplete Programme KPI 2 on mobility and KPI 5 on the visibility of the Programme.

The Culture strand of CE2 has been re-adapted to make it more efficient and flexible in its delivery of financial support. The European Cooperation projects remain the largest action of the Culture strand, by volume of funding and number of projects. On average, European Cooperation Projects had a budget of EUR 63.2 million per year. CE2 introduced more flexibility in the design of the projects in CE2 with the addition of a medium-scale category. Under this new category, projects must be constituted by 5 entities in 5 different countries and can receive a grant of up to EUR 1 million, covering up to 70% of eligible costs. The requirements concerning the number of participants for the large-scale Cooperation Projects have increased in CE2, with a minimum of 10 partners in 10 different countries requested. Under CE2, a total of EUR 193,275,907 has been distributed so far across 429 projects. The average grant size for small-scale projects is now EUR 193,677, i.e. a 3% increase from CE1, whilst for large-scale projects, it is now EUR 1,924,583, representing a substantial 25% increase from CE1. This has opened space for medium-scale projects, which have an average grant size of EUR 891,260 (this is 58% the size of previous large projects but four times more than smaller projects).

The shift towards longer and larger project grants is also reflected in the European Networks and Platforms actions. In CE2, a total of EUR 28,325,472 has been distributed so far across 37 Network projects and a total of EUR 33,355,091 across 16 Platform projects. This equates to average grants of EUR 765,553 for Networks and EUR 2,084,693 for Platforms, i.e. increases of 77% and 36% respectively. MAF allows for a longer-term perspective for both the supported organisations and the professionals of the sectors, who see these organisations as being more stable. The same model of funding has been chosen for the Pan-European Cultural Entities action, which supports 4 orchestras.

There has also been a consolidation and simplification of the approach to the “Circulation of European Literary works” action under CE2. The two types of projects previously eligible for funding have been merged into a single action, which has distributed EUR 16,553,060 across 134 projects, i.e. an average grant of EUR 123,530 (an increase of 121%). Projects now have an average duration of 28 months, with most projects lasting over two years and some up to four years. For the first time, minority and regional languages were made eligible in CE2, to better support the Programme’s objective of promoting linguistic diversity.

The stakeholder consultations suggested that the increased size of the Creative Europe 2021-2027 budget 82 has only gone a small part of the way to addressing the significant challenges created by inflation and rising costs in recent years. Several consulted stakeholders highlighted that inflation had made staffing and operational expenses difficult to manage within the allocated budget, despite the improved rate of co-financing. Stakeholders stated that some parts of the sectors were particularly hit by much higher energy prices (particularly large cultural venues, including museums, galleries and theatres), but also increases in other costs (e.g. raw materials needed for production). Analysis of the impacts of inflation tends to confirm stakeholders’ views that grant sizes have generally not kept up with price increases. In 2022, EU annual inflation reached a high of 9.2% 83 . A price deflator, which takes into account EU inflation rates in 2021 and 2022, reduces the median grant amount from EUR 199,998 to EUR 178 093, which is significantly lower than the previous Programme’s median value of EUR 196,406 84 .

The Culture strand of CE2 sought to improve sectors’ accessibility to the Programme by increasing the ceilings on co-financing and increasing the share of support provided. In this context, taking into account the challenges associated with COVID-19 and the need to ensure accessibility to the Programme for smaller CCS organisations, higher co-financing rates were also introduced in the CE2. The lower own resources levels necessary to apply under CE2 were therefore welcomed as an important improvement. For instance, the co-funding rate for the different categories of European Cooperation projects increased to 80, 70 and 60% for the small, medium and large-scale Cooperation projects respectively. As a result, during the first three years of CE2, the average co-financing rate for the Culture strand was 77%. The change was even more useful as some stakeholders emphasised the difficulties encountered in securing public national/regional/local or private co-financing under the CE1 period especially in Central and Eastern European countries.

There is some indication that the increasing grant sizes and higher co-financing rates led to an improvement in accessibility to the Programme’s Culture strand when measured by the numbers of project partners. This is particularly relevant as the sectors targeted by the actions are characterised mostly by micro, small and medium sized entities. The Programme monitoring data suggests that there was a significant increase in the number of unique organisations supported by the Programme as the average number per year is 746 under CE2 compared to 508 under CE1. The picture is less clear however when specific actions are compared. Under CE1, the European Cooperation Projects action had the highest average number of partners per project at 5.8 in comparison to 5.3 under the current Programme, due to the introduction of the medium-scale category for this action.

The budget for CE2’s Culture strand has allowed the Programme to allocate funds in line with the original request set out in the grant application and beneficiaries were largely satisfied with the amounts received. Under the Culture strand, the average grant of EUR 432,224 awarded to projects compares to an average of EUR 436,125 requested by successful applicants, meaning 99% of the requested budget was awarded. The rate is very similar across all the strand’s actions. The ratio of budget awarded to budget requested was at a similarly high level under CE1. In addition, taking the concerns reported by stakeholders in relation to inflation into account, most respondents to the beneficiary survey (87%; n=688) thought the allocated budget under the Culture strand of CE2 was fully (65%; n=490) or somewhat sufficient (25%; n=198) to achieve their planned results, whereas only 9% (n=68) of respondents viewed the budget allocated to their project as not enough to achieve their planned results, and 5% were unsure (n=37).

Coherence

The current CE2 strand is largely an evolution from the approach and activities under the Sub-programme of CE1 and the transition between the two iterations has been fluid, as illustrated by the high level of continuity in beneficiaries. Since CE1, the Culture strand has strengthened its coherence with a broader set of objectives, by increasing funding for the Platforms and Perform Europe schemes, launching Culture Moves Europe and complementing the horizontal instruments with a sectoral approach.

The design and implementation of the Culture strand appear to be well aligned with the general and specific objectives, and the priorities envisaged for the strand by the regulation.

The horizontal and sector specific actions appear to provide a flexible framework that enables the scheme to engage with the broad diversity of CCS organisations that are covered by the regulation. The concentration of support under the European Cooperation projects and other horizontal actions can mean that there is a directive approach to the design and outcomes of projects in support of the objectives of the Programme. This includes a greater degree of evolution in the design of calls and priority topics or expected results. However, the core characteristics of supporting European level collaboration and mobility for cultural and creative sectors is well realised. Sector-specific calls have enabled a more targeted approach to specific topics but could increase the potential for duplicating results and efforts across actions.

The Culture strand is coherent with EU, national and international initiatives and opportunities in support of the cultural and creative sectors. The Culture strand supports the implementation of EU policies and initiatives targeting the CCS, in particular the New European Agenda for Culture while also being in line with the ambitions of the New European Bauhaus through projects and activities that contribute to the initiative ‘s objectives.

EU programmes such as Horizon Europe, Erasmus+, CERV, the RRF, and the ERDF are complementary to the objectives of the Culture strand, which remains the only EU funding source dedicated specifically to culture. RRF, ERDF and Interreg support culture and heritage across the Union by providing country-specific support. Some Member States have directed support for the CCS via both the RRF (EUR 11.7 billion, across 18 Member States) and the ERDF (over EUR 9 billion across 22 Member States for the objective on culture and sustainable tourism) to support the dual transition of CCS buildings, digitalisation of cultural content, construction/restoration of cultural venues, as well as protection, development and promotion of cultural assets. Regarding Erasmus +, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a specific call was held under the 2020 Call of the Erasmus+ Strategic partnerships, called ‘Partnerships for creativity’, with the allocation of an indicative EUR 100 million budget to address the priority “Skills development and inclusion through creativity and the arts”. In the CE2, areas of synergies are found in the Erasmus+ projects supporting skills for the arts and cultural sectors, for architecture and design and the fashion sector. Culture Moves Europe mobility scheme under Creative Europe is complementary with learning mobility under Erasmus+, as they address different target groups and Culture Moves Europe excludes any projects related to the school or academic curricula.

For instance, while innovation is included in the Culture strand’s specific objective, this is operationalised through encouraging the adoption of new technologies, rather than their development. The Horizon Europe Programme complements this focus with support for research and development within the CCS, which have the potential to be supported under all three pillars, through actions supporting social science and humanities in Pillar 1 (Excellent Science); the cluster 2 on “Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society” included in Pillar 2 (Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness) and the support to the European Institute of Innovation and Technology Culture & Creative Knowledge and Innovation under Pillar 3 (Innovative Europe). RRF, ERDF and Interreg are also key in supporting culture and heritage across the Union, complementing Creative Europe by providing country-specific support. Some Member States have directed support for the CCS via both the RRF (EUR 11.7 billion, across 18 Member States) and the ERDF (EUR 5 billion for the objective on culture and sustainable tourism) to support the dual transition of CCS buildings, digitalisation of cultural content, construction/restoration of cultural venues, as well as protection, development and promotion of cultural assets. The CERV Programme aims to protect and promote the rights and values of individuals and mentions complementarity with the Creative Europe Programme in its multi-annual work programme. The Culture strand in particular complements CERV through its priorities to strengthen European values through cultural awareness and to promote social inclusion and intercultural dialogue, while CERV Programme’s second pillar is particularly relevant for the CCS, with its focus on promoting citizen engagement and participation, as well as raising awareness on common European history. To support the efforts of applicants to identify other sources of funding relevant to Cultural and Creative organisations, Creative Europe has supported under its Culture strand the implementation of the CulturEU Funding Guide 85 an online platform to redirect applicants to different sources of EU support suited for their needs.

Although the Culture strand shares objectives and funding opportunities with national and international schemes, these are typically focused on specific sub-sectors or individual countries. Moreover, few other schemes provide comparable support for mobility and cooperation. For this reason, the Culture strand - particularly the European Cooperation Projects action at its core – is coherent with national and international support mechanisms, offering funding for areas that are often underrepresented elsewhere.

Overall, the Culture strand of the CE2 Programme is largely coherent with other initiatives in support of CCS at national, EU, and international level. Creative Europe support targets areas that are not well supported through other means — there is limited overlap with other support mechanisms.

The Culture strand also supports areas that are strategic for the EU’s priorities for CCS. Horizontal EU principles related to digitalisation, sustainability and inclusion have been integrated into award criteria and action priorities. The strand could more explicitly support these principles through criteria that incentivise addressing these areas, in particular the development of green skills.

4.1.3.Cross-sectoral strand

The cross sectoral strand aims to strengthen collaboration in the cultural and creative sectors to respond to challenges and opportunities that are common to all cultural and creative sectors. Also, since 2021 support is provided to the news media sector, as a crucial component of Europe’s diversity and democratic debate. It also supports the Creative Europe Desks network, which promotes the Programme and provides assistance to potential applicants.

Finally, it supports communication activities to increase awareness and raise the visibility of the Programme, as well as studies and data analysis for policy making.

The CE2 legal base establishes the following monitoring indicators: The number and scale of transnational partnerships formed (composite indicator for the ‘creative innovation lab’ action and cross-cutting actions that support the news media sector); The number of participants in the ‘creative innovation lab’ action and cross-cutting actions that support the news media sector, indicating the proportion of women. The targets are on track to be met. 86

As the creative innovation lab & news media actions are new actions, these indicators are adequate to analyse the impact in quantitative terms for now. The number and scale of cross-border partnerships provide an insight into the impact these actions can have on the wider news sector. For the journalism partnerships, it is also useful to analyse the geographic location of direct and indirect beneficiaries, to understand whether they are from countries with high, medium or low levels of risk to media pluralism. For indirect beneficiaries, only 2021 data is available, which is analysed in a case study on effectiveness. At a later stage, more qualitative assessments may help understand the extent to which they helped change business models, content formats and media literacy practices across Europe.

Potential additional indicators could be explored but may require third party data and/or increased reporting obligations by beneficiaries, including after the project finished. The feasibility of these approaches thus needs to be carefully studied further. As regards news, these could be the geographic location of direct beneficiaries aggregated by risks assessed in the Media Pluralism Monitor hence increasing the number and scale of transnational partnerships and the number of participants. Total audience reach and engagement in supported actions could be another indicator. As regards Innolabs, similarly to the Innovative tools action, additional data could be collected on the number of active users.

News

Effectiveness

Support to news media organisations involve cross-border collaborations among media organizations through journalism partnerships, actions promoting media freedom and pluralism, and since 2022, media literacy activities.

Initial results of novel news media actions under CE2 are promising. The news media sector is a crucial component of Europe’s diversity and democratic debate. The news media actions respond to the specific objective to promote a diverse, independent and pluralistic media environment as well as media literacy. In this initial stage, with a small annual budget of about EUR 15 million, as the news media actions are new, key performance indicators focus on participation in quantitative terms. The high number and scale of cross-border partnerships provide an insight into the impact these actions can have on the wider news sector: there have been 43 project consortia with 224 partners over 2021-2023.

While funding is limited, there are indications that it is well targeted on areas where it is most needed. The projects funded through the Journalism Partnerships provide training and capacity development to foster innovation in content creation as well as in viable business models. Indications of effectiveness can already be found in the final reports for the 2021 Journalism Partnerships that provide grants to third parties, to see if they are from countries with high, medium or low levels of risk to media pluralism. An analysis of the 2021 cohort shows, for example how the projects on ‘Cross-Border Local’ (managed by Journalismfund.EU) and ‘Media Innovation Europe’ (managed by the International Press Institute) targeted risks to news media. Together they distributed €1.2 million to 194 media projects, with grants up to EUR 44,000. A large majority of their funds focuses on countries where there are high risks to media plurality as identified by the Media Pluralism Monitor. 28% of their funds were spent on medium risk countries and 72% on high-risk countries. The average subsidy per inhabitant was 3 times higher in high-risk countries.

Support for media pluralism has funded independent monitoring of risks and to supporting awareness-raising activities. The Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) mechanism tracks violations of press and media freedom and includes safety training for journalists. In 2021, 1373 violations were verified and 346 requests for support received, 117 cases were treated. ‘Media councils in the digital age’, a project that supports exchanges between media councils on journalistic deontology, is essential for news media viability. The Media Pluralism Monitor assesses the risks faced by media pluralism based on a set of 25 key indicators. The Media Literacy action aims to enable citizens to use, and develop a critical understanding of, the media and to support knowledge sharing and exchanges on media literacy policies and practices. It has been implemented through two calls in 2022 and 2023 supporting 13 projects with a total of 62 partners. Both calls expected to support European consortia that can develop best practices, notably through training and educational content to be used by third parties.

Since 2022, support for cross-border media literacy projects help. The target groups are split mainly between projects targeting children/young people, seniors or vulnerable groups and professional groups, including media literacy professionals. Results from the beneficiary survey suggest that the calls are likely to be most effective in enabling knowledge sharing on media literacy and supporting partnerships for systemic collaboration between media organisations. Based on feedback it is also likely that these projects will contribute to improving the quality and trustworthiness of news content.

Despite the above positive developments, it is however too early to draw robust conclusions on the impact of the novel news media actions. Overall, analysing the effectiveness of these recent news media actions in contributing to a pluralistic media environment would require a larger longitudinal analysis to assess the extent to which they helped change business models, content formats and media literacy practices across Europe.

Efficiency and simplification

The approach to designing news media funding has helped to minimise administrative overheads. Support to news media was provided in particular through funding of cross-border journalism partnerships which were awarded through annual, competitive calls for proposals. Between 2021-23 about EUR 34 million was awarded to a total of 27 cross-border partnerships, representing 146 beneficiaries. The average grant size was over EUR 1 million, which is significantly above the Creative Europe average. At the same time several of these projects implemented also support to third parties. For example, in 2021, 30% of the EU grant awarded was transferred to a total of 248 third parties.

However, increasing applications and a decrease in already low success rates call for careful monitoring going forward. Applications rose from 30 in 2021 to 106 in 2023 and the success rate therefore declined from the success rate is 18.5% to 10% in 2023. Given the low success rate, these actions will need to be monitored closely to assess if eligibility criteria or award criteria need to be narrowed down or if the budget allocation can be increased.

Coherence

News media support addresses a distinct yet limited set of topics in relation to media pluralism, freedom and literacy not dealt with in previous programmes. These objectives align with the general objectives of diversity and freedom of expression, as well as competitiveness dimensions. Further expansion of support in the context of Creative Europe would benefit media pluralism and societal engagement more broadly.

The actions are closely aligned with other EU policies and initiatives, principally the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, the European Media Freedom Act, the “News initiative” under the Media & Audiovisual Action Plan, and the European Democracy Action Plan. Notably, support to the news industry contributes to its viability and pluralism across the single market. Also, funding is provided for the functioning of the European Board for Media Services established by the EMFA.

However, some barriers to exploiting synergies exist. The Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme (CERV) aims to protect and promote the rights and values enshrined in the treaties by supporting civil society organisations, in order to sustain open, democratic and inclusive societies. Yet, media organisations are excluded from CERV grants. An attempt to pool resources between CERV and CE under a joint action could not be accomplished due to the differing legal bases, undermining the potential for synergies between the two Programmes.

The Horizon Europe Programme has offered limited support for innovation in the news media industry. Cluster 2 (on Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society, and specifically under the destination ‘Democracy & Governance’) and cluster 4 (on digital, industry and space) included some actions related to the media and news media sectors, focusing on innovative approaches to fighting disinformation, enhancing media and digital literacy, and the use of VR/AR.

Overlaps are most prominent for media literacy, between Erasmus+ and Creative Europe. There are several examples of projects being supported under Erasmus+ that have directly supported media literacy objectives, plus projects on closely related topics of mis and disinformation, digital literacy and online safety.

News media actions complement national support while contributing to a broader, transnational impact, in line with the added value outlined in the Programme regulations, thereby contributing to the implementation of the European Media Freedom Act. Creative Europe support to news media provides opportunities for cross-national collaboration in these areas, including capacity-building activities, knowledge sharing, and the exchange of best practices. More importantly, it adds an important layer of protection and analysis to media pluralism that goes beyond national efforts. By funding the Media Pluralism Monitor, the strand enables independent, comparative assessments of risks and challenges to media pluralism across the EU and participating countries – outcomes that cannot be achieved through national measures alone. Additionally, the Rapid Response Mechanism, funded through the same strand, plays a crucial role in identifying and responding to emerging threats to media freedom. In doing so,

Cross sectoral collaboration among CCSs: Creative Innovation labs

Effectiveness

The Innovation Labs help digital transformation in the Audiovisual and cultural and creative sectors, by supporting experimental production, distribution, and monetization models, it directly contributes to EU priorities for innovation in the audiovisual and CCS sectors.

Following initial difficulties in implementation, the action was recalibrated in 2023 to align it better with its objectives. The Innovation Labs initially struggled with unclear objectives, misaligned priorities, and low-quality applications.  In 2021, only 10 out of 43 proposals met the evaluation threshold, as external experts criticized their lack of innovation and weak cross-sectoral approaches.  In 2023, the action was reviewed with a focus on the use of tech solutions, stronger cross-sectoral cooperation, and better alignment with industry needs.  Despite significant improvements, challenges remain. Future calls will continue refining criteria to ensure that funded projects are genuinely innovative and contribute to the long-term digital transformation of both the AV and cultural industries.  

Efficiency

In view of increasing applications, action was taken to safeguard the Programme’s efficient implementation. As regards the Innovation Lab, projects were awarded a total of approximately EUR 20,500,000 at an average of EUR 624,000 per project.  This grant size is above the average for similar projects under MEDIA and indicates a good level of efficiency. However, there was a rise in applications from 43 in 2021 to 101 in 2023 and the success rate declined sharply from 23% in 2022 to 6% in 2023. Therefore, the eligibility and award criteria were clarified, in order to avoid a high number of applications of low quality and therefore avoid costs for applicants and the Programme administration.

Coherence

Despite some potential complementarities, there is a need to reinforce synergies with Horizon Europe and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). There appears to be complementarities between the Creative Innovation Labs action, Horizon Europe and the EIT. However, unlike Horizon Europe, the Lab supports practical implementation of cross-sectoral projects that provide interdisciplinary approaches, tools and solutions by SMEs, artists, and creative industries emphasizing digital transformation, new distribution models, and innovative content monetization. Actually, the vast majority of the companies supported in 2023 and 2024 by the Labs had never been supported by these other Programmes. With rapid advancements in digital transformation, this type of action is relevant in addressing the evolving needs of the cultural and creative sectors but should reinforce complementarities with other EU-level initiatives to optimize resource allocation and impact.

Creative Europe Desks

Effectiveness

The Creative Europe participating countries increased from 30 at the beginning of the Programme in 2014 to 40 in 2023. The Creative Europe Desks are hosted by 71 organisations in all participating countries and are the gateway to the Creative Europe Programme on national level.

Feedback from stakeholders and beneficiaries suggests that the events and activities offered by the Creative Europa Desks have successfully achieved the Desks’ objectives on promoting the Programme and supporting potential beneficiaries.

The Desks appear to be the principal source of information for applicants, particularly new applicants, and the information and support provided is generally valued by beneficiaries. According to the Beneficiary Survey, most beneficiaries were aware of the Desk prior to making their application (80%). It was their most important source of information when writing the application itself for 53% of respondents and was a secondary source for 34%. The quality of information from Creative Europe Desks was generally considered good or very good by 79% of respondents and was considered the best source of information by respondents.

The Creative Europe Desks have organised a large volume and a wide range of training activities. Activities include workshops on calls and application processes, information sessions, pitching sessions and networking matchmaking events, masterclasses, as well as lectures and conferences. Under CE2, an indicator was added measuring the number of events organised by the Desks. The results by 2023 show that the Desks activities have already reached the target for 2027.

Evidence was more limited regarding the Desks’ activities supporting the communication of the results of the Programme. Desks have organised events in relation to this priority, including events promoting and disseminating the results of Creative Europe. However, these appear to be a relatively smaller share of activities in comparison to the primary role of raising awareness about opportunities through Creative Europe and supporting potential applicants.

Efficiency

As outlined in the effectiveness section above the Creative Europe Desks play an important role in informing national CCS organisations about the Programme and in supporting prospective applicants. The Desks are seen by applicants as an important source of reliable information. Although some variations in the capacities of the Desks were noted, this evaluation does not have sufficient data to provide a comparative assessment, and overall Desks appear to be an effective and efficient way of engaging target groups at the national level.

The shift to lump sum grants is expected to reduce the administrative burden associated with the funding of Desks.

As described above in Ch 2, the amount of funding allocated to the Desks pr year has increased slightly from CE1 to CE2. This rise in the annual budget for the Desks appears to be reasonable considering the high rate of inflation in the 2021-23 period. The volume of assistance required from Desks, including the size and number of applications and subsequent beneficiaries, has also increased, even if a much greater proportion of smaller projects were supported in the previous Programme (particularly under the MEDIA Sub-programme).

4.1.4.Financial Instruments 

The Cultural and Creative Sectors Guarantee Facility (CCS GF) was established to facilitate access for the sectors lending from financial institutions. Impact assessments had estimated the financing gap at EUR 837m – EUR 2.07bn per year2. At its launch, the initial objective for the CCS GF was to cover 10 Member States through guaranteed agreements signed with 10 Financial Intermediaries, in order to mobilise EUR 600 million of financing and achieve a target leverage effect of 5,7.  All these targets were exceeded. There are good indications that not only did the scheme partially closed the gap in lending for the CCS but has also demonstrated that the CCS can be an attractive and sustainable lending proposition. 

In terms of implementation, 87  all the main KPIs were exceeded. In line with Article 18 of the regulation (EU) No 1295/2013, the Commission should monitor the performance of the CCS GF based on the following indicators: the volume of loans guaranteed in the framework of the Guarantee Facility, categorised by national origin, size and sectors of SMEs and micro, small and medium-sized organisations; the volume of loans granted by participating financial intermediaries, categorised by national origin; the number and geographical spread of participating financial intermediaries; the number of SMEs and micro, small and medium-sized organisations benefiting from the Guarantee Facility, categorised by national origin, size and sectors; the average default rate of loans; the achieved leverage effect of guaranteed loans in relation to the indicative leverage effect (1:5,7).

The CCS GF uptake has been impressive. During the CCS GF implementation from 2016-2020, 22 Financial intermediaries (banks or guarantee institutions) operating in 22 countries signed an agreement with EIF, underpinned by a financial commitment of EUR 237 million. These agreements generated 9,458 loans for 7,117 SMEs for a total of EUR 1,818 million in loans generated, which exceeded by far the initial goal. These results were achieved thanks to the additional funding channelled to the CCS GF (EFSI top-ups of EUR 130 million in total), and the increased leverage effect (7,7 vs the initial objective of 5.7).  59,533 jobs were estimated to be supported thanks to these loans.  The loans covered by the CCS GF are generally performing well, with only a 1.1% default rate, on par with other economic sectors.

The CCS GF intervention has been balanced and diverse. There has been a reasonable geographic spread of beneficiaries. Spain, Italy, France, Portugal, and Belgium were the main markets. However, in Germany, the structure of the banking sector along regional/state lines was not conducive to engaging with the CCS GF.

The scheme has predominantly directed support to SMEs from the audiovisual and multimedia sector, representing over 50% of lending and 44% of loans, but also including a range of other beneficiaries. Music, performing arts, video games and films were the main sectors benefitting.

It also improved loan conditions as financial intermediaries reported that the CCS GF had a direct impact of a 1 to 2% decrease in interest rates. Also, the guarantee enabled to provision of loans for CCS SMEs with a less robust file, thanks to lower collateral and due diligence requirements. This allowed SMEs to access loans even without having physical collateral, which is important for an industry driven by intellectual property.

The CCS GF also supported financial intermediaries in terms of skills development and understanding of the CCS markets, in order to overcome negative perceptions of the sector. According to interviews with the EIF and FIs, the capacity building was particularly valuable for financial intermediaries not familiar with the CCS before applying to the CCS GF.   Out of the 21 Financial Intermediaries under the CCS GF, 16 opted in for capacity building and 70% of assessed the capacity building provided as ‘Very Good”.

MediaInvest complements the CCS GF by establishing a dedicated equity investment platform dedicated to European audiovisual and gaming projects, producing and distributing films, series and video games. This aims to increase competitiveness by strengthening the financial strength of European players, for example production companies that may invest their own funds in production and thus retain the intellectual property. Its target is to stimulate more private investment by leveraging up to €400 million between 2022-2027. MEDIA supports MediaInvest through blending of funding with the Invest EU and EIF on a 1:1 basis.

MediaInvest has already shown positive results, starting with the investment in Logical Content Ventures, which aims to raise up to EUR 70 million in equity investment for European audiovisual production and distribution companies. The fund has already developed a strong portfolio of investments, including “Emilia Perez”, “Le Comte de Monte-Cristo”, and “Parthenope”. These success stories demonstrate the potential of MediaInvest to drive growth and innovation in the sector. 88  

These financial instruments have been efficiently implemented through a Delegation Agreement between the European Commission and the European Investment Fund. The management fees are in line with the requirements of Financial and Administrative Framework Agreement and legal basis.

The EIF is thus able to mobilise its expertise in financial instruments and investment markets within an EU policy framework with agreed objectives. Coherence with the EU’s investment strategy is ensured through the governance of InvestEU which is coordinated by DG ECFIN and DG GROW.

4.1.5.Joint assessment of administrative expenses and burden relating to implementation

The cost of administration as a proportion of the total budget for the previous Programme, was well below expected benchmarks and has been further reduced under the current Programme. It went from 7,74% of the grand total budget in 2014 to 6,74% in 2023. The changes in relation to simplification, Multi Annual Financing arrangements, lump sum and cascading grants introduced in CE2 are expected to significantly reduce administrative burden for all parties.

Several measures helped to make the implementation of the Programme more efficient. The introduction of eGrants in CE2 helped to simplify the Programme for beneficiaries through faster electronic applications and streamlined the administration of the Programme implementing a full paper-less process through the use of corporate tools. Relevant training has been provided to the Desks and to final beneficiaries. The average time to grant across the whole Programme is currently 244 days while it was at 300 in its first year of implementation. 97% of grant agreements were signed within the benchmark target of 275 days established by the EU financial regulation. 89 , 90 However, for some actions, such as Culture Moves Europe, the time to grant is approximatively 8 weeks. The simplification of financial capacity verification has contributed to a decrease in the administrative burden for applicants. Financial capacity checks are carried out only on coordinators. Also, applicants that have received over 50% of their annual revenue from public sources over the last two years 91 as well as projects that have requested a grant amount that is not more than EUR 60,000 are exempt from financial capacity checks. 92

Although the onboarding to the corporate IT tool eGrants at EACEA streamlined business processes and simplified the access to the Programme for beneficiaries, also resulted in a temporary increase of workload for applicants and beneficiaries, mostly in its first phase due to the novelty of the tool. As highlighted by interviewees consulted for the recent evaluation of EACEA, 93 the challenges resulting from the tool complexity affected in particular smaller organisations with lower grants. Key areas for further simplifications have been identified in the framework of such evaluation and are under consideration, namely increasing user-friendliness and better alignment of eGrants to the needs of EACEA's stakeholders for application submission, and project management/reporting. A revision of the applications forms is not possible under the current programming period, due to the limited flexibility of the corporate tool and the need to agree modifications with central services. However, the preparation of the next programming period represents an opportunity to take stock of the lessons learnt from the current Programme and to review the application forms in collaboration with EACEA at the end of the programming period. Further scope for increasing user-friendliness is identified in the provision of multilingual resources and services to increase accessibility to the IT tool.

Feedback from beneficiaries suggests the administrative burden has reduced under the current Programme, although this remains high. Almost three quarters (or 73%) of respondents who took part in the previous Programme assessed the administrative burden as high or very high, compared to two thirds (or 66%) under the current Programme. According to the results of the Beneficiary survey, the most common issue faced by 29% of respondents was time-consuming process of application. More detailed data allowing quantification of the administrative time and costs for applicants have not been collected in this evaluation. However, the process of revision of the forms for the upcoming programming period will include the possibility to cater for such data, with the aim of having more solid and precise evidence for analysis in future Programme evaluations.

4.2.How did the EU intervention make a difference and to whom?

4.2.1. MEDIA

The major challenges to the audiovisual sector are transnational in nature (e.g. competition from global tech and media giants, lack of sufficient exports and scale) 94 and can therefore not be adequately addressed by Member States acting alone. EU national markets are small yet content does not travel well across the single market. Non-national admissions in cinema theatres to EU27 content made up 7.5%, of all admissions in 2014, 7% in 2020 and 6% in 2023. 95 A similar trend can be observed on VoD, where the views of non-national content went down from 11% in 2020 to 7% in 2024 96 .  In comparison, on average US content attracts over 60% of audiences in the EU, with national content in second place. This   relatively modest performance is linked to weak discoverability in a context of hyper abundant content, pointing to the need for more effective promotion across Member States. On innovation, among the world’s top 2,000 most investing in R&D, there are only 17 media companies and only three of these are EU companies. This is particularly concerning when considering that the biggest tech companies have been making significant forays to the audiovisual and games sectors (along with music and publishing). Also, the levels of uptake by professionals of AI tools and applications remain limited in the audiovisual and news media sectors.

MEDIA funding’s EU added value lies in its unique European perspective and strategy. While the cross-border circulation and consumption of European audiovisual content is at the heart of MEDIA funding award criteria, Member State funding is typically concerned with the production and safeguarding of national content, without systematically considering cross-border potential, European competitiveness and culture exposure beyond national borders. For MEDIA, fostering the Single Market as a home base to be competitive within the EU and outside, has been and remains a key goal, as evidenced by the consistent emphasis on improving the transnational circulation and consumption of audiovisual works on the demand side and transnational cooperation among AV players across the value chain on the supply-side.

While the exact impact of MEDIA on transnational circulation and audiences of supported work cannot be quantified, MEDIA support is strongly associated with a significantly wider circulation and non-national admissions. MEDIA funding is also associated with an additional 9.5, 6.6 and 3.2 EU non-national countries where a film or series is available across TV, cinema and VoD. It is also associated on average with 125,000 additional non-national admissions per film. Under CE2 the transnational dimension was reinforced even further through greater focus on co-productions/co-development. This related to aspects such as the TV/online scheme, as well as pan-European distribution through Films on the move or VoD networks. This was set in the context of increased competition in the European audiovisual market from global streaming platforms.

MEDIA’s focus on improving a level playing field including through collaboration among European countries with different AV capacities is also something that Member State funding alone would not pursue. These efforts serve the purpose of both cultural diversity and competitiveness in Europe. Indeed, the evaluation showed a strong increase in the share of collaborations between low capacity and high-capacity countries in supported works (5% during CE1 to around 30% under CE2) and a substantial share of works in lesser-used languages among supported works. EU funding is also instrumental to ensure that EU audiovisual players can reap the full benefits of Single Market legislation relevant for the AV sector (AVMSD in particular). Fulfilment of the conditions set out in the AVMSD is a requirement for third countries to participate in the programme.

Despite these positive developments, funding remains concentrated among bigger Member States with France accounting for the largest share of funding. More generally, there is a strong correlation between national support and access to MEDIA funding. 97 As the Creative Europe Programme does not feature pre-allocated envelopes of funding by country and the allocation of funding is the outcome of the qualitative assessment of the applications received, national conditions pertaining to the audiovisual sector have apparently a significant influence over getting access to MEDIA funding. While further measures can be taken at EU funding level to facilitate participation from lower capacity countries, a more meaningful change would require a closer cooperation and alignment with Member States’ policies to support the audiovisual sector.

The central role of global digital platforms for the distribution of European games creates the need for a coordinated European approach to support actions to improve the exploitation of these games. These include marketing, promotion and post-release operations, support to skills development as well as innovations in interactive content. Despite growing national support for the video games industry, it remains scattered and lacks a comprehensive strategy. A study by the European Audiovisual Observatory 98 found that most funding goes to pre-production and production stages, with less for post- -release support (which becomes increasingly important) and studio investment. Overall, limited national funding makes Creative Europe support crucial for this sector.

4.2.2.Culture 

Many challenges that the CCS face are of a transnational nature and require a targeted European approach. Evaluation findings highlight the strong EU added value of the Culture strand, which primarily lies in the transnational dimension that has been clearly embedded in its design and implementation. This is also corroborated by the Contribution Analysis, which has found that, overall, there is strong evidence supporting the hypothesis that the work of the Culture Sub-programme/strand directly contributes to greater opportunities for cross-border collaboration within the European CCS.

Comparing CE1 and CE2, it is noticeable that there is a stronger geographic redistribution of funding within the current Programme in comparison to the previous one as highlighted in the Effectiveness section. The Contribution Analysis network map shows that Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Belgium appear as key nodes within the network, suggesting that these countries had the highest levels of participation and collaboration. These countries not only collaborate closely with one another, but also with other countries, acting as a key bridge within the network. In CE2, the Contribution Analysis highlights a continuation of the concentration of cross-border collaborations around a set of highly engaged countries, including France (which takes on a more dominant role in the network under CE 2), Germany, Italy and Spain. These countries remain key countries across both networks, showing high connectivity with one another and other countries, again acting as a key bridge within the network. However, due to Brexit, the UK disappears from the analysis. Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia emerge as more prominent players in CE 2, increasing their connectivity and intermediary roles. The overall volume and structure of cross-border connections remain dense, reinforcing the strength of cross-border collaboration, but CE 2 sees a slightly more distributed network compared to CE1, with additional countries playing intermediary roles. However, some countries such as Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Iceland were less integrated across both networks, potentially highlighting ongoing challenges in achieving widespread cross-border collaborations across the network.

As the main objective of the strand is support for European circulation of works and professionals, and cooperation between European professionals and organisations, it helped in developing a pan-EU (and beyond) network that no national programme currently achieves.

European cooperation dimensions are clearly incorporated as core requirements in the design of almost all actions. Around 95% of projects supported under both Creative Europe 1 and 2 involved partners from different countries and, as a consequence, the Programme has been a key driver in stimulating an EU level space for cooperation. For example, the Culture Sub-programme of CE1 helped 4,200 organisations from the CCS to work together in transnational projects to collectively deliver over 7,500 cultural activities including festivals, concerts and exhibitions.

The transnational projects supported by Creative Europe were both large and ambitious, meaning the European added value of the Programme partly lies in its ability to support activities at a scale that a single organisation working in a national setting would be unlikely to achieve.

The stimulation of transnational cooperation amongst the sectors covered by Creative Europe is not a fundamental goal present in other programmes supporting the sectors, either at international, national or regional levels. Although schemes supporting the sectors exist, the fundamental objective of these programmes is not to encourage organisations to work across national boundaries and therefore they do not help the sectors to capture benefits such as an expanded international audience base and new industry contracts from outside of their own country. If Creative Europe did not exist, most of the transnational activity supported by the Programme would have not taken place. For example, it emerges from the Beneficiary Survey that almost all beneficiaries (90%) felt that their project or activities would have been affected in the absence of the transnational support through Creative Europe and when asked to quantify the importance of Creative Europe support, most (77%) attributed at least 50% of project activity to the Programme.

By providing direct funding to operate across borders, the Culture strand also acted as a complement to other international and national supports. The majority (85%) of organisations surveyed had not worked in international markets before, with nearly all of these mentioning the costs of producing and showing their works abroad as the main barrier (including the travel of personnel and equipment). Culture strand funding through schemes such as Culture Moves Europe or Perform Europe but also, more generally, the Cooperation projects plug this financial gap with international travel (including residencies) being eligible for financial support in a way that it is not eligible under other international and national schemes supporting the CCS.

These types of schemes make a real difference and are life changing opportunities for many artists when there were no mobility opportunities within national schemes. Evidence shows that 97% of Culture Moves Europe grantees pursue further international mobility. Culture Moves Europe results also show that the scheme can be a springboard for emerging artists’ careers with 76% of grantees receiving job offers, new contracts, or new project opportunities stemming from their mobility experience. In addition, the survey of Culture Moves Europe grant beneficiaries showed that 77.9% would not have been able to develop their project without the Culture Moves Europe grant.

Such cross-border cooperation helped organisations in the CCS address a range of common challenges (such as digital innovation and sustainability) and collaborate on topics or activities that would otherwise not be supported through national schemes. In doing so, it accelerates the development curve within the sectors at EU level. Firstly, it helped those supported to become more competitive through internationalising and mobilising their careers and cultural works.

On the Culture Strand side, it is also important to recognise that the culture content being supported by Creative Europe includes content linked to common challenges and issues facing the EU. There is less data available to quantify the extent to which the Programme helps the sectors work on common EU values, but the Culture strand has been partly designed to ensure content is relevant to issues such as diversity and inclusion. For example, the Culture Sub-programme of Creative Europe 1 supported 1,106 actions that were focused on the theme of diversity and inclusion and schemes such as Perform Europe specifically funds tours that have a social or environmental dimension. In addition, one in four Culture strand projects had a specific focus on reaching an underrepresented group and 76% of projects were effective in reaching audiences that do not tend to visit, watch or consume culture. Other international and national schemes supporting the cultural and creative sectors do not tend to have a specific requirement or objective linked to supporting cultural content with a clear social goal and do not build this into their design. Culture Moves Europe in its architecture introduced a system of top-ups to allow for greater accessibility and incentivise green travel, which only few schemes offer similar assistance. This again highlights that the Programme adds EU value by not only supporting large volumes of new cultural content but also content that has a wider set of positive values and messages aimed at groups that do not always consume culture.

There is moderate evidence to support that the work of the Culture strand is also key in terms of indirectly contributing to greater opportunities for cross-border collaboration within the European CCS as funded projects continue and extend cross-border activities beyond the duration of the project. Indeed, projects funded under the Culture strand that have a cross-border component (i.e., rely on partnership working across national borders) tend to attract more funding, last longer, and involve more partners. This extended engagement and larger network foster an environment where collaborations can thrive beyond the projects' duration.

Through its focus on funding for international cooperation in various forms, the Programme allows for professionals and organisations from countries with less-established cultural and creative sectors to cooperate with organisations and professionals from European cultural hubs. While results refer to the project leader and to a general funding envelope, a much more diverse range of partners benefitted from the Programme’s funding.

The example of Serbian organisations’ and professionals’ mobility illustrate the value of the Programme in terms of access to international cooperation. For Serbian artists, who do not benefit from access to the EU’s open market, participation in the Programme helps counteract isolation and, consequently, potential stagnation. A clear upward trend emerged between 2016 and 2019 regarding Serbian artists’ and professionals’ participation in Creative Europe mobility initiatives. The number of artists awarded went from around 30 in 2016 to around 180 in 2019 and the number of cultural professionals awarded went from around 20 in 2016 to more than 100 in 2019.

Culture strand’s complementarity

The Culture strand also complements other international and national support by providing direct funding to operate across borders. The majority (85%) of organisations surveyed had not worked in international markets before, with nearly all of these citing the costs of producing and showing their works abroad as the main barrier (including the travel of personnel and equipment). Culture strand’s funding through schemes such as Culture Moves Europe or Perform Europe but also the Cooperation projects plug this financial gap with finance being eligible for international travel (including residencies) in a way that is not eligible under other international and national schemes supporting the sector.

The Culture strand has also helped countries to come together to address key social issues, shining a brighter spotlight on issues such as inequality and artistic freedom in a way that national schemes alone do not tend to do.

The sectors also have a common challenge linked to a general lack of capacity to grow and take advantage of key opportunities such as the digital shift. This was tackled through the strand directly supporting capacity building activities with 532 capacity building and training activities taking place over CE1. However, a key way in which capacity was built across the strand was indirectly through organisations learning new skills from their counterparts in other countries involved in their Creative Europe project. This was particularly true when partners in Member States and participating countries where CCS are less mature worked with organisations from countries with more established cultural infrastructure and practices, where the transfer of new learning was particularly high. The development of new skills through participation in Culture strand projects was therefore often indirect and these skills were often learnt by implementing projects in a collaborative way (rather than just by practitioners specifically receiving training or capacity-building support). When probed to highlight skills and capacity that were gained by working with international rather than national partners, projects again talked about developing new skills to operate at an EU rather than local level to developing their cultural works to non-native audiences.

In particular, the impact of participation in Culture Moves Europe on acquiring new skills proves its complementarity with other instruments focusing on skills development. Data obtained through the individual evaluation reports of Culture Moves Europe 99  shows that almost all the participants (99.2%) acquired some new skills, knowledge or competences during the mobility. When asked about the type of skills, knowledge and competences obtained, the most frequent answers concern networking and enhancing positive interactions with people from different backgrounds (79.7%), developing technical/artistic and creative skills directly connected to participants’ occupation (76.4%), improving self-empowerment and self-esteem (68.3%) and teamwork/cooperating in a multicultural team (68%). Therefore, a combination of skills and competences connected to internationalisation (networking, interactions, cooperating in multicultural teams), creative skills and individual development arise as the defining contributions made by Culture Moves Europe to most participants in the Programme, which has a life-changing effect on their careers.

However, the extent to which the Programme added value by fostering economies of scale and growth and jobs in the cultural and creative sectors and creating a leverage effect for additional funds is more mixed.

There is good evidence that the Programme did support leveraging for additional funds, beyond the specific role of the CCS Grant Facility. Cofinancing dimensions remain an important element of support in many cases. In this context, feedback from beneficiaries also suggests that the Programme has generated leverage effects for funding from other sources (see Figure below). These effects were principally associated with access to grants from public sector (63% of respondents). In addition, there is also evidence of leverage effects for commercial funding opportunities (32%), which are most likely to be associated with Media beneficiaries, and other private non-commercial funding opportunities (31%).

Creative Europe’s offer in addition to other culture and audiovisual sector support schemes

Creative Europe’s offer in addition to other culture and audiovisual sector support schemes

4.2.3.Cross-sectoral strand

News

Support to news media, media pluralism and media literacy is increasingly crucial due to the growing threats to media freedom in the Member States, as evidenced in the EC Rule of Law reports. Few to no Member States are dedicating significant financial resources to supporting the safety of journalists or resilience and innovation in media outlets. Many journalists turn to the EU as the only remedy. Support under Creative Europe also addresses industrial issues faced by all media across Europe, ranging from news deserts to falling revenues. In this context, Creative Europe funding breaks national silos through the identification of good practices and the sharing of business insights and innovations. While the added value of these actions is very promising and has been received positively by the news media stakeholders, the limited value of the intervention has brought an important oversubscription on actions such as media literacy and support to journalism.

Innolabs

The Innovation Lab has enabled collaborations and ideas exchange, among a wide range of cultural and creative stakeholders:

startups, SMEs, independent creators, cultural institutions, and technology pioneers in the sectors, which wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

Desks

The Creative Europe Desks have fostered collaborations between European CCS through events and activities focused on creating new collaborations and projects. Thus, the Desks have provided European added value through collaboration between the Desks themselves, but also in creating platforms where European CCS can find partners for future projects and strengthen their existing relationships.

4.2.4. Financial Instruments

The CCs GF has addressed the financing gap which exists across the EU by conducting market research at European level and designing financial solutions which are applicable across Member States. The European Investment Fund was delegated responsibility to design and implement these instruments, drawing on its expertise of European financial markets and players. The “Ex-ante evaluation of new financial instruments for SMEs, mid-caps and organisations from the cultural and creative sectors” found that funding gaps and barriers persisted across Europe as regards both loan and equity finance. The calculations indicated that there was a shortfall in debt finance in the range of EUR 2.51 billion – EUR 6.22 billion over three years, or EUR 837 million -EUR 2.07 billion per year. The CCS GF addressed this gap in a significant way, reducing it by 15 to 30%.

Whilst certain Member States, such as France and Italy, had some credit activities through promotional banks, the EIF was able to provide greater scale and scope. It was thus able to harness economies of scale, including favourable financial conditions and sharing best practices and information about the CCS.

The CCS GF thus enabled diversification of sectors, lowered interest rates, increased lending without physical collateral and developed understanding of banks about the CCS.

Concerning MediaInvest, it adds value by addressing structural weaknesses in the equity investment ecosystem, which is common to countries across the EU, in particular:

1) Underdeveloped financing ecosystem across Europe: private equity investments in the audiovisual sector (including movies, videogames and entertainment) have been on a downward trend. In 2023, the value of private equity deals in this sector was on track to hit its lowest annual level since at least 2019.7 

2) Capacity Building: MediaInvest includes capacity-building activities for investors and financial intermediaries, increasing their understanding of global audiovisual production and distribution markets.

3) Supporting creative autonomy and scaling-up: The European audiovisual sector is characterized by a large number of creative independent companies which face unequal access to finance. MediaInvest supports these companies, enabling them to grow, compete internationally and harness their creative autonomy.  

4.3.Is the intervention still relevant?

4.3.1.MEDIA 

The effectiveness of MEDIA outlined in section 4.1 needs to be assessed against the overall macro-level situation in the EU audiovisual sector and beyond. As demonstrated under section 4.1, MEDIA is strongly associated with a wider transnational circulation and consumption of European audiovisual works, has strengthened the competitiveness of supported companies, especially production and improving the level playing field within Europe. However, its core mission of increasing cultural diversity and the competitiveness of the sector has to be carried out in the face of unprecedented challenges.

On the demand side, EU audiovisual works (including those not supported from MEDIA) are facing tough competition, especially in non-national markets, from US and other countries. For example, in the critical streaming segment (which is driving growth in the industry), EU consumers spend only 7% of their time watching content from other EU countries, while they spend 61% of their time on US works and 20% on works from other non-EU territories (e.g. UK and Asia). 100 Furthermore, EU films and series face tough competition for attention, especially from younger generations, from other media content: in a recent EU-wide consumer survey 45% of respondents between the ages of 18 to 30 indicated that they spend the most time on social media, followed by music and video games. Only 9% indicated films and series as they most preferred type of content. 101 On the supply side, the production and distribution environment is also getting tougher. With market consolidation, the surge in investment by streamers into EU content, especially original content, is slowing down. 102

Another key challenge is to ensure access of European citizens to quality European content, especially to the cinematic experience, which plays a vital role for societal resilience. Screen density varies dramatically across the EU, from 24 screens per million inhabitants in Romania to 102 screens per million inhabitants in Ireland. 103 There are also big gaps within Member States, with rural or less populated areas often lacking cinemas, thereby creating “cinema deserts”. Yet, access to content is crucial to foster a shared European identity. The experience of Europa Cinema confirms the value of the network in addressing underserved communities (e.g. through mobile cinemas in Greece or “Cinema without barriers” projections for disabled audiences in Poland) and by enhancing the social experience of going to the cinema through by community building strategies.

The EU AV sector is also lagging behind the US and other regions in innovation, especially in streaming. The share of EU broadcasters in streaming subscriptions is less than 20% and the three main US streaming services (Netflix, Amazon, Disney) alone control 64% of all EU streaming subscriptions. 104 Non-EU players therefore have a strong influence on what kind of EU content Europeans consume, not only in the context of streaming, but in the context of the entire AV sector (to recall, recommendations of streaming services have an above-average impact on consumers’ overall choices regarding films and series, especially among younger generations). 105 On the technology front, the rapid evolution of Generative AI in particular is likely to have a transformative impact. US competitors already leading in online AV content are particularly well-placed to take a lead on this as well, especially tech giants like Amazon, or Google.

For MEDIA to become more relevant in view of the market and technological trends in the sector, more efforts are needed to strengthen its impact in digital media. In 2023, 61% of works supported for development were developed for cinema, 31% for TV and less than 8% for VoD, while only 5% of market revenues came from cinema, and 75% from TV. 106  More account needs to be taken of market trends, where streaming increased to 16% of market share, cinema fell to 5% and TV remained constant). Distribution support is also mainly aimed at theatrical distribution. Despite positive developments in VoD support as outlined in Section 4.1.2, it has not reached similar audience development impact as the Europa Cinemas network in theatrical distribution.

There is also scope to future proof funding through a stronger focus on young people and their media habits. Supported works primarily focused on adults, with 10% of works supported for development under CE2 meant for children. 107 This can be a missed opportunity for the competitiveness potential of funding for two reasons : 1) European TV animation travels significantly better on VoD than other content, on par with TV animation from other territories, including US ; 108 and 2) Young people are the future demand and there is evidence that they are more loyal to certain content brands/IP than older generations 109 . Thus, MEDIA should focus more on developing and exploiting transmedia IP, which is a lucrative business model is deployed by major US studios and streamers and other international players (e.g. Japanese mangas and anime).

To retain its relevance, MEDIA also needs to concentrate on areas where national funding and private investment is more scarce. This means continuing to monitor European added value, taking into account the uneven level playing field between Member States due to different national conditions (of support, market size etc). An enhanced cooperation with member states to explore synergies between EU and national funding and between different funding areas would need to start first with a more systematic monitoring of the relevant support at national level.

On videogames, despite adjustments made to the current support to fit the evolution of the gaming and immersive markets, there is a need to reflect on how best to support this growing segment of the audiovisual industry. The EU remains weak at distribution level, with few operators of marketplaces that sell games, and limited visibility for EU games. Consequently, the EU industry captures a limited share of the revenues of the sector. Furthermore, stakeholders from the video games sector welcomed improvements under the current Programme 110 but noted the modest means allocated to development (calls for proposals as largely oversubscribed, and the gap is widening with time). Aspects to be taken into consideration include the use of global digital platforms for distribution of European games, support to marketing, promotion and post-release operations, support to skills development and innovations in interactive content.

Against the backdrop of all these challenges the rationale of continued European action to improve the cultural and competitive situation of European audiovisual content across the EU and beyond cannot be any clearer. The challenge is how to future-proof the Programme in view of the rapid transformative developments in digital media and AI, taking into account also rapidly changing consumption patterns. In particular, the evaluation results show the need to strengthen the relevance of the Programme to help audiences, especially young digital native-people, to discover quality European audiovisual content in the online environment characterised by content hyperabundance. This will require new approaches to promoting content to audiences, including the effective exploitation of digital tools and technologies and effective transmedia exploitation strategies to IP. As the biggest competition for audiences’ attention comes from global digital platforms, this requires a European response. This futureproofing will therefore likely require well-coordinated cross-border efforts across the whole EU AV sector, including public and private players, with EU funding to structure and incentivise these efforts in a cost-effective way.

4.3.2.Culture

The Culture strand is framed by the European Agendas for Culture and the EU Work Plans for Culture, which focus on empowering cultural professionals, enhancing cultural participation, promoting environmental benefits through culture, and strengthening the EU's global cultural partnerships. In addition, the Programme is in line with the 2016 Joint Commission/High Representative Communication “Towards and EU strategy for international cultural relations” 111 and the 2014 Commission Communication “Towards an integrated approach to cultural Heritage for Europe”. 112  At a broader political level, EU cultural policy making and hence the Creative Europe Programme were designed to comply with the European Commission’s political priorities for the 2019-2024 period: A European Green Deal; A Europe fit for the digital age; An economy that works for people; A stronger Europe in the world; Promoting a European way of life and A new push for democracy.

Relevance to the cultural and creative sectors 

Under CE2, the Culture strand has seen a sharp rise in both the volume and quality of applications, reflecting growing demand and relevance for the cultural and creative sectors, which suggests an increasing interest in support, but is also likely to reflect funding difficulties facing CCS organisations, including national level funding. This gap is particularly acute in the European Cooperation Projects, the strand’s largest action, where the action faces massive and increasing oversubscription. It went from receiving 463 submissions in 2021 to 831 in 2023 and due to a stable budget, had its success rate dropping from 27% in 2021 to 17% in 2023. While competition ensures quality, it risks discouraging new applicants if the Programme is seen as too demanding. As things stand, there is four time the demand of available budget by CCS organisations through this call. This is particularly concerning as the trend continued in following years not covered in the evaluation. As a consequence, it was decided from AWP 2024 onwards to open the European Cooperation projects call to large-scale project once every two years, and from AWP 2025 to have a capping of the number of applications an organisation can take part in per year, now limited to three applications.

The specific needs of the CCS have been assessed in several reports, surveys, and statements, and include, among many others, the need to have access to sustainable funding and/or fair pay, 113 to develop tools to tackle the twin transition, 114 to establish diverse and gender-equal practices in the sector, 115   116 to tackle gender equality and inclusion issues and to foster mobility. About 83% of respondents to the Beneficiary Survey endorse the Programme calls’ relevance to evolving sectoral trends; 87% appreciate improvements made in the new 2021-2027 cycle compared to the previous 2014-2020 cycle. Furthermore, over 92% of respondents found the conditions of Culture strand’s calls to be relevant with the mission of their organisations, and 90% found them to be relevant to the needs of their organisations.

Greening Efforts

Unlike under CE1, ecological concerns -as a cross-cutting priority- are taken into account in the design and implementation of all funded projects under CE2. According to the Programme Performance Statement 117 in the 2021-2023 period, EUR 260.8 million have been distributed to actions aligning with the Climate Mainstreaming process (as against EUR 28 million for the entire period of CE1). The figure represents 12% of the total 2021-2027 Programme budget, keeping Creative Europe on track to reach the 30% threshold set for climate-relevant projects. 118  In the survey conducted for this evaluation’s supporting study, most respondents (54%) state that the strand is relevant in promoting projects that tackle the challenges linked to the green transition. For example, the Sustainable Theatres Alliance for Green Environmental Shift (STAGES – Sustainable Theatre Alliance) project is aiming at accelerating the transition within the theatre sector and fostering a real sustainable development approach in artistic practices, operations and buildings.

Gender Equality and inclusion

In comparison with CE 1, CE 2 places a special emphasis on gender equality and inclusion in terms of stated commitment and funded projects. According to the Programme Performance Statements, over the 2021-2023 period, a total of EUR 61,8 million was allocated to interventions, the principal objective of which was to improve gender equality. At the same time, if also considering interventions with a probable, though indirect, positive impact on gender equality, the overall support rises to EUR 1045,6 million (data includes also MEDIA and Cross-sectoral strands).

The project She Raps is a good example illustrating how the Culture Strand focuses on gender equality. This project aimed at increasing the participation and visibility of female rappers on the European rap scene and at developing their professional skills. The ambition was to lead to the structuring of a European ecosystem with professionals and media, facilitate the professionalisation of female rappers, ensure that the place of women in rap was no longer questioned, and ultimately give the public access to increased cultural diversity.

According to the same source, the Culture strand incorporates inclusion and diversity as key priorities, contributing to the objectives of the 2020–2025 Gender Equality Strategy. Particular consideration is given to proposals that outline clear strategies for promoting gender balance and inclusiveness within CCS. The Programme further integrates monitoring mechanisms to evaluate the effectiveness of its gender equality measures. This includes tracking the gender balance in funded projects, assessing the impacts of initiatives on women’s representation and participation, and adjusting funding criteria to address observed disparities. 

Mobility
Mobility is supported through all the Culture strand’s actions. Milestones set for the 2021-2027 period, based on historical data from European Cooperation Projects funded in 2017 and available through the 2022 Programme Performance Statement 119 , show that an expected 170,000 artists and cultural professionals will be mobile beyond national borders thanks to the Programme’s support. It must also be noted that such number is most probably an underestimation as it does not include figures from two key actions, i.e. Platforms and Networks. Furthermore, it is by scaling up i-Portunus, the successful first EU-funded scheme directly targeting individual mobility for artists and cultural professionals, that CE2 launched the Culture Moves Europe action, covering the 40 Creative Europe countries. With a budget of EUR 21 million (2022–2025), an estimated 7,000 grants for individual mobility and residency actions were already made available. 120

Digitalisation

The Culture strand actively supports the digital transformation in the CCS through targeted actions and funding initiatives that address the evolving needs of artists, organisations, and audiences. According to the Programme Performance Statement, a total of EUR 256,7 million have been awarded to projects sustaining the digital transition (data refers to all strands from 2021 to 2023). Within the European Cooperation projects action, supporting the digital transition of the European CCS is emphasised, being selected as the first or second priority by 15% of all projects funded in the 2021-2023 period. Additionally, Creative Europe Networks aim to assist these sectors in harnessing emerging technologies to drive innovation and improve their competitive edge. Finally, 73% of respondents of the Beneficiary Survey either fully or partially agree with the statement ‘The Culture strand actions under the current Programme are promoting relevant projects to tackle the challenges linked to the digital transition’.

Working Conditions of Artists

The Creative Europe Programme put an emphasis on promoting fair remuneration and inclusion within its funded initiatives. Calls, especially the latest European Cooperation Projects calls, include provisions related to the working conditions of artists and cultural professionals and recognise the precarious nature of artistic work and foresee a priority on “Artists and cultural professionals: empowering the cultural and creative sectors”. One of Perform Europe’s award criteria, “Fairness”, assesses applications based on their commitment to fair practices, equitable payment, and improved working conditions for artists. The Programme prioritises projects that enhance the economic resilience of CCS workers. Such priority is especially important in the ‘Circulation of European Literary Works’ action, a strong commitment to fair remuneration and increased visibility for translators within the European literary ecosystem.

4.3.3.Cross-sectoral strand

 News

Support to news media under Creative Europe comes at a turbulent time for the industry. Revenues are sharply declining, with the printed press forecast to decline by 45% from 2019-2028. Advertising revenues, traditionally a lifeline of the media sector, are shifting to global platforms like Google and Meta. Nonetheless, reliance on advertising remains high, and diversification efforts are unevenly distributed across the fragmented EU industry, with smaller companies unable to pivot to digital models. Employment in the news media sector has declined by 30%, with a net loss of over 225,000 jobs between 2008 and 2019, primarily affecting traditional print media. Yet journalists are now expected to possess diverse skills, including digital content creation, data analysis, and multimedia storytelling. Meanwhile, citizens are progressively shifting digital means of news consumption and relying more and more on social media platforms.

Support to news media thus started in 2021, under Creative Europe 2, aiming at strengthening both the sector's economic resilience and democratic role. This seed support focused on three areas of action, given the budgetary limitations under the cross-sectoral strand.

Firstly, the Programme mapped risks and threats to media pluralism across the Union through a Media Pluralism Monitor. This annual report has consistently identified medium or high risks to pluralism in most EU countries, driven by factors such as political interference, economic pressures, and the concentration of ownership. On average, only 43% of EU citizens believe their media is free from political and commercial pressures. Another action, the Media Ownership Monitoring System, enhances transparency around media ownership structures.

Secondly, Creative Europe has contributed to address some of the industrial weaknesses of the European news media sector, notably through media collaborations. The strand also strengthens democracy and societal resilience by supporting local and regional journalism, investigative reporting, and public interest news. These initiatives are particularly relevant in underserved regions i.e. “media deserts”. The focus on media freedom is exemplified by the Media Freedom Rapid Response Mechanism, which provides legal support and safety for threatened journalists.

Finally, a media literacy action intends to empower citizens to navigate digital media. Media users are exposed to a growing number of media sources, formats and mediums, and concerted efforts are needed to make sure they are able to engage and interact effectively with content.

Thus, Creative Europe has addressed key emerging needs of the information market. However, the actions were constrained by limited budgets, and challenges at EU level have kept increasing. The political guidelines 2024-2029 acknowledge “a deep change in the information space, shifting from editorial media sources to user-generated content mediated by platforms and pushed by algorithms”. The guidelines also commit to “support for independent media and journalists”. 121 The extent to which this will require an adaptation and increase of the Union financing response remains to be determined.

Besides the limited budget, the actions to be funded are prescribed in the legal base of Creative Europe in an exclusive and binding list. Actions directly funding the fight against disinformation are not on this list and instead have so far been funded under the Digital Europe Programme. Under the budget principle of specificity, an action which has been financed under a specific EU programme should not be financed under another programme. Also, a revision of the legal basis of Creative Europe would be very challenging to negotiate at this point. Instead, the approach taken, as foreseen in the legal basis, has been to support quality content and media viability and media freedom and media literacy through a number of innovative actions. In the future, ensuring more flexibility in the legal base would help respond to emerging challenges.

Innolabs

The evaluation confirmed the potential of collaboration among different cultural and creative sectors and the need to address the common challenges they face, which is more pronounced for a number of specific copyright-intensive industries. The implementation of the Creative Innovation labs- an action fostering cross-overs across all cultural and creative sectors- has shown that synergies are more pronounced between media and other copyright-intensive media sectors (music and publishing) as they face common challenges/opportunities for competitiveness and digital transformation as well as the increased control of large extra-EU platforms over what content people in Europe and beyond consume. They also face similar challenges on the creation and consumption side due to AI. Such collaboration will be increasingly relevant in future because of the acceleration of the digital transformation, including the deployment of AI. The needs are expected to be significant as only 30% of surveyed CCS companies have adopted a digital transformation strategy and companies have indicated that investment in AI represents less than 1% of their total investments. 122

The potential of coherent transmedia IP strategies among copyright-intensive sectors can be better exploited in the Programme. Consumer and other research indicate that the exploitation of the same IP across different content formats (films/series, books, games, music) has a positive impact on competitiveness. Young people especially seem to be loyal to IP 123 . Indeed, large US studios and streamers have built lucrative franchises around different IPs 124 . Transmedia exploitation helps with discoverability and increases commercial success for both the original and adapted version. For example, according to one research project, the box office revenues of a film adapting pre-existing content (books) is around 50% higher than films with an original screenplay, while TV dramas adapted from books attract 58% more viewers  125 . It also works the other way round: for example, one book sold 82% of all its copies in the year after it was adapted into a TV drama despite being in circulation for 25 years before its adaptation. 126

Creative Europe Desks

The Creative Europe desks support the implementation of the Programme as well as sharing of results and learning from the Programme with national stakeholders, as well as opportunities for learning between Desks. As noted in the Effectiveness section, the role of Desks is well established, following on from the previous Programme, and plays an important role in the operation of Creative Europe. In addition to a clearly defined role in relation to supporting beneficiaries, they also play an important role in contributing to the specific objective of promoting cross-sectoral transnational policy cooperation, through the dissemination of results and learning.

Creative Europe is a popular Programme, with more than 29,600 applications submitted in CE1 and already 6 169 in CE2 between 2021-2023 127 , most of these from micro and small companies with limited resources. Access to information and gaining a better understanding of the application processes for Creative Europe funding, remains a crucial need for these companies.

The Creative Europe desks’ main missions make a relevant contribution to this need in terms of promotion of the Programme and dissemination of information on calls for proposals, results and training opportunities, as well as advice to applicants. Relevant actions of the Creative Europe desks also include events and training to the CCS locally and nationally, as well as peer-learning and knowledge-sharing across the desks, especially to provide adequate guidance to applicants on new actions (e.g. Creative Innovation Labs) or priorities of the Programme.

4.3.4.Financial Instruments 

Overall financial instruments play a key role in providing alternative sources of financing in a context where European audiovisual content, especially films, tends to be dependent on public financing. At the same time European films tend to be under financed compared to their US competitors which have much easier access to finance. On average public funding contributes 26% of film financing 128 and this limits the potential for more ambitious films with the capacity to attract wide international audiences. For example, the average annual budget of MEDIA of EUR 200 million is less than the production budget of a single film from the “Mission Impossible” franchise.

The Creative and Cultural Sectors Guarantee Facility remains relevant and whilst it partially closed the gap in lending for the CCS, the financing needs remain significant. MediaInvest also remains highly relevant for the audiovisual sector. It was launched under the impetus of the Media and Audiovisual Action Plan 129 which found that there was a gap in equity financing for audiovisual, as well as other creative sectors, estimated at 399-648 million euros per year. Whilst MediaInvest is expected to make a significant contribution, the gap in financing is expected to remain significant in future.

Moreover, the powerful leverage effect makes financial instruments a valuable complement to grant funding. While the grant element allows for co-financing the starting costs of a project, the latter facilitates the investment into works and companies at scale. This model applies across content formats, from films to series and video games. Therefore, continued blended financing of a dedicated equity investment platform will be very relevant going forward.

5.1.Conclusions

Creative Europe is the EU funding Programme supporting the cultural, creative and media sectors, with the objective of enhancing competitiveness and promoting cultural and linguistic diversity and heritage. Cultural, creative and media sectors represent a significant industrial ecosystem and face common challenges stemming among others from market fragmentation, digital transformation and intense global competition. At the same time, Creative Europe operates within the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, where culture is a supporting competence whilst the EU has a single market policy on media. The budget of Creative Europe is relatively modest, equivalent to 0,2% of the 2021-2027 MFF.

However, Creative Europe targets activities where the EU intervention can bring additional value compared to action of Member States alone. In particular, it addresses the fragmentation of the cultural, creative and media sectors along national and linguistic borders.  Moreover, national-level funding alone is insufficient to support the overall competitiveness and diversity of EU media, audiovisual and other cultural and creative sectors. In particular, Creative Europe supports transnational cooperation and circulation of content across the EU, through pan-European activities such as collaborations, co-productions and networks, thus leveraging the value of national assets.  This approach also strengthens EU citizens’ equal access to media and cultural content. Thus overall, the role of Creative Europe has been to make a meaningful contribution whilst fully respecting subsidiarity.

The 2018 mid-term evaluation of CE 1 found that the Programme contributed to the general objective of supporting cultural diversity by increasing access of audiences to a diversity of European works and to the objective of competitiveness by helping CCS operators scale up at the European level. This ex-post evaluation of Creative Europe 2014-20 corroborates these findings through additional evidence on impacts.

Having three distinct strands means that the Culture, MEDIA and Cross-sectoral strands operate as three largely distinct but complementary elements. Across these three strands, the common key dimension of funding is the promotion of cross-border, pan-European activities in different forms (collaborations, co-productions, networks etc.). The strand approach is clearly founded on the distinctiveness of the sectors each strand aims to support, recognising that their needs and opportunities are different. At the same time the three distinct strands clearly correspond to the overarching general objectives of the two Programmes. The challenges facing the CCS, including media, as articulated in the Regulations, are generally well translated throughout the design of the Programme and strand objectives and appear to be aligned with European policy agendas and programmes.

In its first iteration (2014 to 2020), the Programme had a budget of EUR 1.47 billion, which was expanded to EUR 2.5 billion in its second iteration (2021 to 2027), representing a 66% increase. This has allowed for greater reach and impact within the CCS. Notwithstanding this increase, the budget implementation of CE2 has been effective and on target despite challenging circumstances, ranging from Brexit to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Creative Europe is co-managed by DG EAC and DG CNECT and its implementation, mainly delegated to the Education and Culture Executive Agency. Administrative costs have increased less than the operational budget, indicating efficiency savings between 2014 and 2023.

The CCS GF made a major contribution to the competitiveness of Europe’s cultural and creative sectors. It was the first guarantee facility dedicated to these sectors at European level. Through effective collaboration between the Commission and the EIF a strong market response was cultivated in sectors previously perceived as high risk. Over EUR 1.8 billion in loans was leveraged, which exceeded by far the initial goal of EUR 600 million and made a significant contribution to improving access to finance for CCS SMEs. The CCS GF was subsequently incorporated into InvestEU as of 2021.

A key issue for Creative Europe is that there are low levels of funding compared to the challenges at stake. Creative Europe alone cannot solve systemic issues, but budget limitations affect the effectiveness in meeting the objectives set. There is already a high level of over-subscription across the three strands, with success rates as low as 26% in Culture, 16% in MEDIA and 8% in the Cross-sectoral. However, if the full potential of Europe’s unique CCS is to be realised then additional strategic interventions will be needed. The focus will also need to be sharpened on today’s challenges, for example the platformisation brought about by giant global competitors, the shift of audiences online, the surge of AI and the increasing threat to artistic and media freedom. Furthermore, in order to have greater impact, a Team Europe approach will be needed, through concerted action with Member States, which remain by far the most important sources of funding for these sectors, while acknowledging that there are great differences among Member States’ spending.

At the same time the synergies between the Culture and MEDIA Strands could be better exploited, notably among copyright intensive industries, which are the CCS most heavily affected by the competition from the US platforms, changed consumption patterns and the AI revolution. Synergies with other EU programmes, including Cohesion funds and research and innovation programmes should also be strengthened to address the scale and the multi-dimensional nature of the challenges.

5.1.1.MEDIA 

Over three decades the MEDIA brand has become an organic part of the European audiovisual ecosystem and is associated with a significantly wider transnational circulation of works. It is widely known, respected and coveted across the sector. During this time, the core mission of MEDIA has remained clear: to bring quality European films and series to people across Europe. The evaluation revealed that on average MEDIA supported EU films and series are associated with a significantly wider circulation than non-supported films: on average this means 9.4, 6.6 and 3.2 more EU countries across TV, cinema and VoD respectively, than an unsupported EU film or series during the evaluation period. While the results are not significantly different for cinema and VoD for CE1 and CE2, the difference is more significant for TV (10.6 CE1 and 3.3 CE2), though the significant additional circulation is also present under CE2. This difference may be due to methodological issues and full impacts will need to be checked for the final evaluation. MEDIA support was also associated with 125,419 more non-national cinema admissions relative to unsupported films. CE1 shows a stronger impact (additional 134k admissions) than CE2 (97k). Extrapolating this to all supported films under CE1, MEDIA is associated with at least 241 million additional admissions. The sample under the current Programme is not large enough to make a reliable extrapolation at this point in time.  

On the other hand, the significantly higher availability of supported works in non-national VoD catalogues do not seem to have translated into significantly higher views. On the contrary, the average views for supported works on VoD catalogues in the sample was 376,346 for works supported during CE1 and 496,676 for CE2 (405 361 for both Programmes combined). This compares to significantly more non-national views for comparable unsupported works, which average 1,301,953 views for the CE1 and 1,551,724 for the CE2 period (1,400,631 across the combined period). All in all, despite some methodological issues, these findings showcase a significant challenge for MEDIA funding to attract audiences online (in the absence of sufficiently granular data for films and series shown on TV, the impact of MEDIA funding on non-national TV audiences could not be estimated). 

MEDIA support to films also achieved considerable international cultural impact as demonstrated by the significant level of recognition of supported films at international festivals and awards across both CE1 and CE2.

MEDIA has delivered also on its other key performance indicators. It has supported training audiovisual professionals, with 80% of participants declaring a strengthened professional capacity and 50% women participants. Co-productions have increased to 84% of MEDIA supported works under CE2 (from 36% under CE1) and remained considerably higher than the industry average across both Programmes (estimated at 12%). The number of audiovisual works produced in lesser used languages has increased and the number of professionals reached by business-to-business activities is on track.

Moreover, MEDIA has responded to the digital shift by consistently encouraging innovation. Innovative tools and business models have been funded, in particular harnessing artificial intelligence. Video games and virtual reality experiences have been developed. The network of cinemas uses digital tools to reach wider audiences.

The innovative MediaInvest equity platform has been co-funded by InvestEU and MEDIA under CE2 is on track to achieve the target of leveraging EUR 400 million in investment, as set out in the Media and Audiovisual Action Plan. It has attracted a healthy market response, with the four deals already signed. Allocated funds have been fully absorbed and additional budget resources could allow further high leveraging of private investments, helping the industry compete with global players who often have easier access to private capital. Continued blended financing of a dedicated equity investment platform will be very relevant going forward

Efficiency has improved consistently across the two Programmes. Administrative costs have been reduced especially by consolidating delivery of support into bigger grants, thus reducing the number of contracts and payments to be processed. The number of grants processed fell by 46% despite the budget envelope increasing by over 65%. However, the number of applications has steadily increased, requiring extra processing and evaluation. Therefore, further streamlining of MEDIA actions is needed combined with a shift towards closer monitoring of project results and impacts. Further simplification of the application process for beneficiaries, which are typically micro and small companies, has also been highlighted as key.

MEDIA funding’s EU added value lies in its unique European perspective and strategy, which aims to strengthen a European industry which is more than the sum of its national parts. Projects under both Programmes systematically address cross-border potential as key to competitiveness and diversity. By scaling up and achieving economies of scale, MEDIA projects develop a Single Market in media content and services, as a home base to be competitive within the EU and beyond.

Moreover, MEDIA addresses the uneven capacity of the audiovisual industry across Member States through strengthened “level playing field” measures which boost the participation of companies from lower capacity countries, further favouring cultural diversity. The participation of LCC countries rose to 22% over 2021-22 and there has been increased collaboration between low and higher capacity countries between the two Programmes. Further efforts will be needed to ensure broader participation and to avoid the dominance of beneficiaries from a few countries only. Efforts are also needed to foster a fairer access to the cinematic experience across and within the EU Member States, which provide a unique social experience of shared storytelling.

MEDIA is fully in line with the objectives of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive which provides the regulatory framework for a single market and promotion of European works. Indeed, alignment with the AVMSD is a requirement for third country participation.

Market and technological developments have also re-enforced the rationale of MEDIA funding as the major challenges are transnational in nature, such as lack of exports and audiences shifting online. The traditional focus has been on films and theatrical distribution but the new trends in consumer preferences which are driving the media need to be better integrated, including video-on-demand and video games. Moving forward, futureproofing of MEDIA funding to better cope with these challenges is necessary as well as safeguarding the role of the audiovisual industry in fostering cultural diversity and societal resilience.

While MEDIA demonstrated the flexibility to react to unforeseen challenges, the rigid legal basis, which establishes an exclusive list of actions to be implemented, has restricted the capacity to respond adequately to emerging challenges. These include the market disruptions caused by COVID-19 pandemic, accelerating digital transformation e.g. generative AI and Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.

5.1.2.Culture 

The design and implementation of the Culture Sub-programme in Creative Europe 1 appeared to be well aligned with its general and specific objectives. Through substantial investments in cross-border collaboration, mobility, capacity-building, and audience engagement, the Sub-programme strengthened the international presence and competitiveness of cultural professionals and organisations, especially small and micro entities. By facilitating over 1,200 transnational projects creating in turn over 7,500 cultural activities and supporting more than 22,000 professionals in their international careers, it fostered lasting partnerships and encouraged cultural diversity and inclusion. The objectives set in terms of key-performance indicators were, where possible to monitor, reached by the Programme. As highlighted by the Contribution Analysis, there is strong evidence that the Culture sub-Programme contributed to greater opportunities for cross-border collaboration by funding projects built upon cross-border partnerships, therefore contributing to the creation of a European cultural ecosystem.

The Sub-Programme intervened in a number of different areas of the value chain, including creation, development and design, through to production, distribution and circulation. It helped stakeholders from different countries come together to address key societal issues, such as inequality, discrimination or artistic freedom in a way that national schemes alone do not tend to do.

Building on the successes of CE1, the Culture strand of CE2 has wider ambitions than its predecessor in that it has a stronger focus on sustainability and on promoting societal resilience and enhancing social inclusion. It has been assessed to be effective, efficient and internally and externally coherent throughout the evaluation process and it is possible to notice that there is an evolution within the strand toward larger and potentially more complex cultural networks through the actions of the Programme. Through the cross-border collaboration it entices, the strand has a clearly defined EU added-value, which is further reinforced in its current version. Finally, the strand is found to be coherent within EU policy, as well as when answering the needs of the different EU CCS, as seen with the positive reception met by the actions of the Programme.

All targets set by the key-Performance indicators collected by the 2021-2027 Programme are on track to be reached by the end of the MFF, except the one for the number of people reached by the activities supported by the Programme which should be revised.

The Culture strand has allocated EUR 50.7 million to projects prioritising social inclusion, with 81% of CE2 projects indicating a positive impact in this area. While outcomes are not yet fully measurable, the strand clearly targets social inclusion and intercultural dialogue by embedding EU values such as equality and sustainability into funded content. It also aims to broaden access to culture beyond traditional audiences. Future audience data will be key to assessing its long-term impact on societal resilience and inclusion.

The Culture strand continues to support the mobility of artists as a core feature, although the captured data is still currently incomplete, in particular with the development of the first European mobility scheme for artists Culture Moves Europe. This aspect is instrumental in boosting both emerging and established careers, according to those supported.

The strand is also helping CCS organisations in reaching new audiences, particularly beyond national borders, and early results from actions such as Culture Moves Europe scheme sees benefits for individuals’ careers leading to increased competitiveness in the CCS.

The use of sector specific calls in the Culture strand enables a more targeted approach to specific topics but may increase the potential for duplication of results. The Culture strand has seen a greater degree of evolution in the design of calls and priority topics, which adds to its level of coherence. Horizontal and sector-specific actions appear to provide a flexible framework that enabled the strand to engage with the broad diversity of CCS organisations. However, due to the limited budget of the Culture strand, it has not been able to cover all the main different sectors and, more importantly, to devise robust tailored-made strategic actions that would really complement the horizontal approach.

The degree to which the size of the Culture strand’s budget was appropriate in supporting the cultural and creative sectors improved under CE2 due to an increased budget. This substantial increase in the budget under the Culture strand allowed the Programme to provide larger grant allocations to each successful applicant. In the meantime, the increasing grant sizes and higher co-financing rates led to an improvement in accessibility to the Programme as measured by the number of unique organisations supported. Data suggests that there was a significant increase in the number of unique organisations supported by the strand.

In more general terms, both the Culture sub-programme of CE1 and the Culture strand of CE2 aimed to contribute to the Union’s global strategy for international relations. Around 300 direct grants to stakeholders in non-EU countries have been provided under both Programmes. In total, within the two programming periods, direct support to 15 countries outside of the EU has been given (representing around 13-18% of the total number of grants provided by the Culture strand). Although it is too early to measure the impact of this work on strengthening international relations the strand is making progress towards supporting the cultural dimension to international cooperation.

5.1.3.Cross-sectoral strand 

The Creative Innovation Lab has provided seed funding for collaboration between audiovisual and other cultural and creative sectors. After initial difficulties in attracting relevant proposals, it has gradually provided added value by funding multidisciplinary projects which address common challenges, notably reaching wider audiences and monetisation, through harnessing digital applications such as artificial intelligence and block chain. Further synergies with other EU funding sources, such as the European Innovation Council or Cohesion funds could scale up these innovative projects and strengthen their sustainability.

Support to news media has been introduced into the second Creative Europe in response to the growing political priority of strengthening democracy and the rule of law across the European Union. The news media industry is facing turbulent times with revenues and employment sharply declining and threats to media freedom increasing. High quality projects have been selected to address key structural and technological changes faced and to promote an independent and pluralistic media environment as well as media literacy. These new projects are proving effective, notably by targeting areas most at risk.

However, these initial efforts and resources need to be significantly scaled up. The latest Media Pluralism Monitor shows varying levels of risks to the independence and pluralism of news media sectors in different Member States. The situation for news services specifically in less populated, peripheral areas is increasingly problematic, creating so-called ‘news deserts’ across the EU. Few Member States are dedicating significant financial resources to supporting the safety of journalists or resilience and innovation in media outlets. Media has become critically important in a period marked by geopolitical tensions, the rise of extremism and disinformation. Many journalists turn to the EU as the only remedy and stakeholders have called for a “Marshall Plan for journalism”, with the twin objective of supporting media freedom pluralism and the resilience of the sector.

The main tasks of the Creative Europe Desks are to provide information about the Programme, assist the applicants, stimulate cross-border cooperation and support the Commission in managing the Programme. Considering the number of schemes available under Creative Europe for the European CCS, and that these CCS are mainly very small enterprises with limited resources, the assistance of the national Desks is crucial for the success of the Programme. In addition, the possibility to contact the national desk reduces significantly the need for guidance to applicants by the EACEA or the Commission.

Desks appear as a trusted source of information, and most applicants use the Desks as their primary source. According to the Beneficiary Survey, the quality of information from Creative Europe Desks was generally considered good or very good by 79% of the respondents

While the strand demonstrated the flexibility to react to unforeseen challenges, the rigid legal basis, which establishes an exclusive list of actions to be implemented, has restricted the capacity to respond to emerging challenges. These include the market disruptions caused by COVID-19 pandemic, accelerating digital transformation e.g. generative AI and Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.

5.2.Lessons learned

5.2.1.MEDIA

MEDIA has a proven impact on the audiovisual industry in the EU as it is instrumental in enabling the industry to operate beyond national borders and reach wider audiences, as highlighted by the Programme indicators. Bringing films, series, documentaries and other works to audiences across Europe is a powerful way of sharing European stories which reflect our diversity and values. It also promotes business models (e.g. international co-productions) and the use of innovation, which help companies become more competitive. The share of international co-productions among supported works is a useful metric to assess competitiveness, as they generally provide greater access to audiences and finance in across more countries and offer opportunities for operational efficiencies. However further efforts are needed to make content available across borders on all distribution platforms, including for communities in areas lacking cinema infrastructure.

Overall MEDIA has helped to shape a European ecosystem and complements the audiovisual policies of Member States which have a domestic focus. MEDIA support therefore needs to be accompanied by collaboration and dialogue with Member States and the whole audiovisual industry in order to better exploit synergies.

MEDIA has evolved successfully over CE 1 and CE 2, with a sharpened focus on innovation and cross-border collaboration, including co-productions and pan-European distribution. While in some areas (e.g. co-productions) the positive impact of changes under the current Programme is already clearly measurable, for some other key actions (e.g. support directly to innovative tools or 360 support for B2B markets), more time is needed for these impacts to fully materialise. This adaptability is a key success factor for MEDIA as it responds to market trends driving the audiovisual industry as well as lessons learned about how funding can add most value. As media markets are global, innovative and dynamic it will be important to continue monitoring trends in order to ensure steer MEDIA so that it keeps pace with developments. However, the flexibility of MEDIA has been limited by the legal base which specified an exclusive list of actions to be funded. In particular, the further integration within MEDIA of online video on demand services, to which audiences have shifted, needs to be further considered. Also, the significant differences between countries’ participation in MEDIA needs to be further addressed.

The combination of grant funding and financial instruments has served the industry well by catering for different needs, from access to seed funding and co-financing to bridging loans and equity for ambitious pan-European ventures. The blended support to MediaInvest should thus continue and the Desks can play a valuable role in informing stakeholders about the ongoing opportunities, including with the CCS GF.

IP intensive content industries share common challenges, in particular in attracting wider audiences in the digital age and responding to consumer preferences, with special focus on digital native young people. The success of and experience with MEDIA in reaching wider cross-border audiences through co-productions and pan-European distribution is very relevant in this regard.

The evaluation showed that going beyond the official monitoring indicators offers relevant additional insights in the impact of the Programme. Third party data in particular allows for not only a monitoring of outputs but also benchmarking. The latter helps identify impacts and areas to improve. For example, the detailed title-by-title Lumiere databases of the European Audiovisual Observatory enabled a counterfactual analysis, which could not have otherwise been carried out. Such external data also allowed other benchmarking, e.g. the share of co-productions against the wider market. Given MEDIA’s focus on transnational aspects of activities in the audiovisual sector, the best metric to assess the impact on competitiveness is to look at the market share of supported works among non-national views (exports) in relation to comparable other (non-supported) European works on the one hand, but also in relation to US and other third-country works. These can complement existing indicators on competitiveness, in particular the share of international co-productions among supported works.

However, the evaluation exercise revealed a number of data gaps. The EAO does not have a complete database, similar to Lumiere cinema (supported under the Policy actions of MEDIA), which provides an overview of all titles viewed on a large sample of broadcasting services across the EU and only provides aggregate data on this. Third party commercial data exists, as audience measurement for TV is well established, but procurement would entail a substantial cost. The VoD viewing data would also benefit from covering additional countries and catalogues, as the small sample was the reason why some models could not be run. However, VoD viewing measurement is still an evolving market, which places limitations on the data that could be acquired. An important question is how to combine audience measurement for linear TV and VoD, seeing as traditional broadcasters now also offer different VoD services. Moreover, data on some important aspects, in particular genre and budget, are not consistently available in third party film and series databases. Genre is the most important feature of a film and series, which attracts people to the film and series, across both younger and older generations, based on successive consumer surveys commissioned by DG CNECT on media consumption habits. Budget (both production and marketing) is a potentially relevant aspect on the supply-side, which the current evaluation (counterfactual analysis) was unable to capture due to data limitations. We also do not have access to data on the promotional activities on streamer’s websites, a key source to discover content for both younger and older generations as confirmed by the above surveys. Finally, data on the consumption of other types of online content competing for people (especially young people’s) attention, like social media, games, music etc would be important to assess the competitive positioning of EU films and series.

The usefulness of additional data has to be assessed against the cost of obtaining it on the Commission and/or beneficiaries. For the final evaluation, efforts are needed to find additional external data to fill in the gap regarding key variables, TV consumption and production and marketing budgets in particular. As regards administrative costs, the beneficiary survey in the final evaluation should contain more specific questions on this. As regards training data, additional data needs to be collected on the purpose of the trainings in order to assess their relevance. Monitoring the number of active users of supported innovation projects would likely require collecting data from beneficiaries after the project ended. The following table provides examples of potentially useful indicators for the final evaluation and indicates where this would mean additional efforts/costs. The feasibility of additional indicators therefore needs to be studied carefully ahead of the final evaluation of CE2.

As regards project monitoring, there is room for improvement. The final reports of beneficiaries do not always lend themselves to aggregating and analysing data, due to format (pdfs) and lack of granularity e.g. in budgets. Reporting requirements may be refined to address these aspects whilst taking into account the need to avoid over-burdening beneficiaries which are typically micro and small enterprises.

Finally, it can be explored how gains in administrative efficiency could be further enhanced. The feasibility of an increased use of multi-annual financing, cascading grants and lump sum payments could therefore be explored. The experience with these simplifications can be further assessed for the final evaluation and more granularly followed up with beneficiaries in the survey accompanying the final evaluation (including compiling data on specific administrative costs).

5.2.2.Culture

The Culture strand is working and performing well, effectively engaging with a high number of cultural and creative organisations. It offers rich opportunities to work transnationally, collaborate across borders, strengthen organisational capacity, and successfully connect with new international audiences. Despite such significant achievements, the Culture strand faces oversubscription issues, with high demand and limited funding. The evaluation of the Programme shows that the strand is effective, efficient, relevant with strong EU added value, while entailing low administrative costs.

The international opening of the Culture strand, going beyond the EU, is an essential element for promoting EU values, intercultural dialogue and raising awareness of EU democratic values. It has also facilitated peer learning on key issues for culture and heritage. The projects supported by the strand create an environment that is beneficial for peace, security and sustainable growth within the EU and beyond. This dimension becomes even more relevant in the prospect of an enlarged Union, where culture has a key role to play in bringing people together, enabling dialogue, mutual understanding and cooperation based on common values.

The strand’s main actions (European Cooperation Projects, Networks and Platforms), which represent the bulk of its budget, have been kept mainly unchanged between the 2014-2020 and 2021-2027 iterations of the Programme. This has facilitated a continued exposure to similar types of interventions over time, fostering stronger results and impacts, in particular in terms of cross-border collaboration, mobility, capacity building and circulation. This horizontal approach has been refined with the formulation of clear priorities in the Cooperation Projects’ calls published on a yearly basis under CE2, corresponding to the strand’s priorities as well as the Programme’s cross-cutting issues (in particular, inclusion, gender equality or contribution to the fight against climate change) as specified in the corresponding regulation.

Both the Culture Sub-programme of CE1 and the Culture strand of CE2 have been instrumental in helping the CCS address key issues identified in the regulation, such as the fragmentation of the market along national and linguistic lines or the challenges connected with the dual transition, but with the obvious limitations resulting from a limited budget as highlighted in the evaluation. However, some needs have become more acute in recent years while new pressing ones have emerged, in particular the need to preserve artistic freedom, recognise the intrinsic value of culture as well as its contribution to society, promote solidarity, inclusiveness and intergenerational fairness, the need to help CCS navigate the digital transition and the surge of AI, the need to take into account the new international geopolitical landscape, and to give a response to the political priority of improving working conditions in CCS. To help address these issues, the Commission is working on a proposal for a Culture Compass for Europe, a strategic framework to guide the multiple dimensions of culture. This is a major policy initiative, giving culture a more central role within the EU’s policy framework for years to come.

The dual (horizontal and sectorial) approach introduced in the Culture strand of CE2 is successful and both approaches are complementary. The sectorial approach has been instrumental in tackling specific challenges of some sectors, notably the music, books and architecture sectors, while the horizontal approach (with its horizontal priorities) offers more agility and leeway for cultural and creative operators to cooperate, experiment and develop bottom-up solutions to common challenges. It is advised to keep a similar approach in the next programming period, while the approach may need reinforcement to make the strand more policy focused.

The evaluation has identified that the demand for funding is up to four times greater than the available budget for the Cooperation projects action. This action represents the cornerstone of the strand, covering 60% of its budget. Currently, many high-quality proposals do not get funding due to oversubscription. Furthermore, despite recognised progress made in making the Programme more accessible and inclusive, for example through increased co-funding rates, the addition of a third medium-scale category in the Cooperation project’s action, and reduced financial checks, barriers continue to hamper the participation of potential beneficiaries. There is a need for the Commission to have a regular review and close monitoring of the simplification measures introduced in the current Programme. In addition, the Culture strand should maintain its focus on addressing accessibility challenges and continue to expand its reach to cultural and creative organisations that have no prior experience working at EU level. Indeed, as mentioned in section 4.1.6, several simplification and burden reduction measures have been introduced between CE1 and CE2. However, the Commission is exploring options to further improve the Programme’s efficiency and accessibility. For instance, regarding the Culture Strand, the Commission is now considering moving all actions still managed with actual costs to a lump sum system, which has proven to be more efficient. Some burden reduction measures could also be introduced in CE2’s successor Programme, such as a simplified application form.

It is also clear that further efforts are needed to increase the visibility of the opportunities the Culture strand offers and the impact it produces. Outreach could be further improved by sharing and better targeting information about the Programme to reach out to new organisations in different sectors and countries that are not sufficiently engaged with the Programme. The process of disseminating and exploiting project results could be improved to ensure that these are further shared and promoted and thereby more effective uptake and long-term impact.

Several lessons have emerged as well regarding the regular monitoring, evaluation and data availability. While improvements of the monitoring framework were made in both programming periods, and the diminution and streamlining of the different key performance indicators between CE1 and CE2 benefitted the current Programme by offering a large monitoring of many crucial areas of intervention of the Culture strand, some indicators remain difficult to measure, in particular concerning the results (outreach) and impacts of the Culture strand. The Commission will undertake concrete measures to develop a more systematic approach to Programme data collection. These include a thorough analysis of data currently available (including for actions managed outside eGrants), aiming at making better use of the existing data, without increasing beneficiaries’ burden. This will allow for a clearer identification of the evidence gaps, especially concerning the results of the different actions supported by the strand, to be complemented through adjustments or ad-hoc data collection. In parallel, efforts and additional resources are put on further developing EAC Qlik sense reporting tools, while enriching them with data gathered from data sources other than eGrants. More complete reporting tools will facilitate the overview and analysis of Programme outputs and results across actions and sectors. Additionally, discussions with the industries (mostly music and book sectors) are ongoing to assess how better industry data can be shared and used to analyse the impact of the relevant initiatives of the Programme on them. These steps will allow for the development of a better and more complete monitoring system both when it comes to outputs, and results of the Programme. Future evaluations will also benefit from this improved monitoring system, when long-term impacts are to be analysed.

5.2.3Cross-Sectoral strand

On news media, for which support was introduced 2021, the evaluation confirms that the results of the cross sectoral strand of Creative Europe are very promising. This seed funding to news media has focused on three areas of action, given budgetary limitations. Firstly, the Programme has helped monitor and map media pluralism and ownership across the Union. Secondly, media collaborations have contributed to addressing some of the industrial challenges. Funding also strengthens democracy and societal resilience by supporting local and regional journalism, investigative reporting, and public interest news, in particular in “media deserts”. Finally, media literacy actions have helped citizens to navigate digital media in the context of growing disinformation.

Thus, Creative Europe has addressed key emerging needs of the information market. However, the actions were constrained by limited budgets, and challenges at EU level have kept increasing on areas such as media freedom, media viability and disinformation, negatively impacting societal resilience and democratic participation. The political guidelines 2024-2029 acknowledge “a deep change in the information space, shifting from editorial media sources to user-generated content mediated by platforms and pushed by algorithms”. The guidelines also commit to “support for independent media and journalists”. The extent to which this will require an adaptation and increase of the Union financing response remains to be determined.

The evaluation also confirmed the potential of collaboration among different cultural and creative sectors and the need to address the common challenges they face, which is more pronounced for a number of specific copyright-intensive industries. The implementation of the Creative Innovation labs- an action fostering cross-overs across all cultural and creative sectors- has shown that synergies are more pronounced between media and other copyright-intensive media sectors (music and publishing) as they face common challenges/opportunities for competitiveness and digital transformation and due to the increased control of large extra-EU platforms over what content people in Europe and beyond consume.

Under CE2, an indicator was added measuring the number of events organised by the Desks. As demonstrated by the table in the Effectiveness chapter the 2027 target has almost been reached by 2023, thus the Desks have been overperforming vis-à-vis the expected target. This should lead to a closer analysis of the different events and activities carried out with a view to refining the indicator and adjusting the target for 2027.

The Creative Europe 2014-2020 final and 2021-2027 interim evaluation (Decide reference: PLAN/2023/95) has been steered by the Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture (DG EAC), with Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology as co-responsible for the evaluation. The evaluation was carried out under the scrutiny of an Interservice group (ISG) comprising of representatives of 5 other DGs (SG, LS, BUDG, RTD and JRC). The ISG met for the first time in the context of the evaluation on 03 March 2023 130 .

The ISG was involved repeatedly at key stages of the evaluation and the group convened at several stages of the evaluation on the following dates

-03 March 2023

-4 May 2023

-22 February 2024

-28 January 2025

The ISG has been consulted as well (in writing) on the documents produced by the contractor. The ISG met last on 9 April 2025 to discuss the SWD before its submission to the Regulatory Scrutiny Board.

No exception from the usual procedural requirements of the better regulation guidelines was requested for this evaluation.

This evaluation is based on evidence gathered via different channels and an overview is presented in Annexes II, III and IV

The main sources of evidence are internal analyses by the European Commission, the report presented by the evaluator contracted in the framework of this evaluation carried out between 2023 and 2025.

The evaluation has been presented to the Regulatory Scrutiny Board of the European Commission on 14 May 2025 and received a positive opinion with reservations. The comments expressed by the Regulatory Scrutiny Board and the manner they have been taken into account in the Staff Working Document is detailed below.

The final evaluation of Creative Europe 2014-2020 (CE1) and the interim evaluation of Creative Europe 2021-2027 was coordinated by the Creative Europe Programme EAC.D2 unit, in cooperation with the Audiovisual industry and media support programmes unit (CNECT I3), the unit Evidence-Based Policy and Evaluation, of the Commission’s Directorate-General Education, Youth, Sport and Culture (DG EAC), with the support of: (i) the Executive Agency EACEA (Units B1 and B2); (ii) and an interservice group comprising 5 Commission DGs and jointly chaired by DG EAC and DG CNECT. The evaluation process started in 2023 and was guided by the Terms of Reference drawn up for contracting the external evaluator, consulted with the ISG and approved by EAC board of directors.

The Staff Working Document draws upon extensive quantitative and qualitative evidence gathered through a variety of data collection activities undertaken by the external contractor, and a thorough evaluation analysis, applying the methodologies described below. The data was tested and triangulated against the main evaluation criteria in accordance with the approaches outlined in the better regulation toolbox 2023 chapter 6, and the framework established by the Creative Europe Programme regulations.

The methodology used to evaluate the Creative Europe Programme showed several strengths, including a clear intervention logic framework and a mixed-method approach that combines quantitative elements (Programme data, Eurostat data, survey data, counterfactual analysis, contribution analysis) with qualitative elements (e.g. interviews, literature review and desk research). These methods provided a comprehensive analysis and valuable insights. While the evaluation made use of large, detailed external datasets, some gaps in the data available remain (see ‘Lessons learned’ section). Additionally, there was potential for missing perspectives in interviews, and the possibility of bias in self-reported data from participants when it comes to surveys conducted for the evaluation. A major limitation in the analysis of Programme data for CE2 consisted in the lack of critical mass of completed projects by the end of 2023, which was the evaluation cut-off date. This stems from the long duration of the supported projects, many of which were extended due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite these potential limitations, the methodology has provided a solid foundation for assessing the Programme.

The study of the external evaluator was conducted using a mixed-method approach, delivered in five Work Packages (WPs):

In addition to the support study, the evaluation used publicly available data sources, such as data extracted from Programme Performance Statements 131 , Creative Europe Monitoring Reports, the European Media Industry Outlook 2025, Studies and consumer surveys commissioned by DG CNECT, Studies published by EACEA, Eurostat, reports published by relevant cultural and creative organisations (e.g., On the Move); non-publicly available data, namely Programme monitoring data available in internal EAC/EACEA dashboards; and market data on media markets from third party sources, like the European Audiovisual Observatory for example. 

MEDIA strand

CULTURE strand

Effectiveness

Efficiency:

Relevance

Coherence

European added value

CROSS SECTORAL Strand

Effectiveness

Efficiency:

Relevance

Coherence

European added value