Modern economies are not built with capital or labour as much as by ideas. Numerous EU Member States are assessing the impact of intellectually based businesses on the economy. A raft of United Nations agencies, covering health, development or trade, are disputing over how best to enforce copyright and make use of culture as a tool for economic development.
The powers of the European Union in cultural matters are recent, dating back to the adoption of the Maastricht treaty in 1993. They focus chiefly on the ideas of enhancing heritage and cultural cooperation between Member States. However EU policy makers largely ignore the commercial, social and industrial dimension of creativity and culture.
KEA’s study on the Economy of Culture which was completed for the European Commission, casts some light on this unexplored field. It captures the direct and indirect socio-economic impact of the cultural and creative sector in Europe, but it also and most significantly finds out that, in the context of the Lisbon agenda, creativity cannot be relegated to the rank of the optional and superfluous, especially when Europe's competitivity and influence in the world is at stake.
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