The Commission adopted a Report on the evaluation of 10 years of the Creative Europe Programme

The Commission has adopted a report on the evaluation of Creative Europe, the flagship EU funding programme for culture and media.

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The report covers the final evaluation of the 2014-2020 programme and the mid-term evaluation of the current programme. It was prepared by the European Commission, supported by an external study conducted by ECORYS Europe and KEA European Affairs. The evaluation is based on a broad set of data collection and analytical techniques, including, for MEDIA, a quantitative counterfactual analysis as well as programme monitoring data, a beneficiary survey and a public consultation.

The report shows that Creative Europe MEDIA has successfully contributed to safeguarding cultural diversity and strengthening competitiveness in the audiovisual sector.

The MEDIA strand strengthened the transnational circulation of European films and series. Supported works reached significantly wider audiences across EU countries than other EU films and series not supported by MEDIA. For example, on average, MEDIA-supported films or series were broadcast on TV in 9.5 more EU countries than other, non-supported EU films and series. They were screened in cinemas in almost 6.6 more countries and could be streamed online in 3.3 more countries than other, non-supported EU films and series.

It also successfully promoted European cooperations, increasingly including also smaller countries. The share of European coproductions is also much higher among supported than unsupported EU films and series (around 84% under the current programme vs an estimated 14% for unsupported works). Moreover, 30% of all supported works under the current programme are collaborations which involve countries with a low audiovisual capacity, a significant increase compared to the previous programme.

Works supported by MEDIA also had a considerable international cultural impact. They received around 1200 nominations for prestigious international prizes and 500 awards. The introduction of financial instruments to attract private investments was a key innovation in funding, which helped to improve access to finance in cultural and creative sectors through loan guarantees and, more recently, equity finance. The Cultural and Creative Sectors Guarantee Facility leveraged almost €2 billion in loans and reduced the shortfall in access to debt finance by up to 30%.  implemented together with the European Investment Fund, paved the way for launching an equity instrument for the audiovisual sector under the current programme - MediaInvest.

In 2021, Creative Europe also started funding high quality projects in news media to promote media independence and pluralism as well as media literacy.

Going forward, the report highlighted that funding to media needs to continue adapting to the significant market, technological and other challenges faced by media sectors.

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