WHITE PAPER Breaking out of the COVID-19 Crisis Restarting the Cultural Creative Industries is at the centre of an open and sustainable Europe

Today Cultural Creative Industries are at the core of the European identity, recognised as an indispensable driver of growth and jobs and cherished as facilitator of innovation throughout the economy. Because of the “Coronavirus” lock-up measurements this major European motor is stalling.

First data from the CCI across Europe, provided by approximately 7.000 survey participants, indicate that the shutdown is not merely a pause of economic activities which will continue as they were before stopped. The governments lock-down because of the COVID-19 virus turned an economic slump into a system crisis: While around 60% of those surveyed have already experienced or anticipate a drop in sales of over 30%, numerous companies point out that they expect significantly higher failures in the future. Due to the design of the study and the bias of the respondents the estimated magnitude, still to be regarded as a conservative assessment, amounts to worrying numbers: CCIs from having an it’s a 5.3% share of the total European Gross Value Added (GVA), (Doerflinger 2016) expect to lose a sum of €273 Bn in turnover until the end of 2020.

Based on this estimation the ECBNetwork concludes that the critical time where the crisis starts to affect the European creative sector spans from beginning of April to the beginning of June. This indicates a tight timeframe for governments and European measures to be taken to avoid a complete collapse of the European creative industries sector.

Given this system crisis of Cultural Creative Industries, Europe's societies, cities and economies, are endangered. CCI turn noise to music, letters to poetry, stones to architectures, and places into venues for diverse cultures and platform of the freedom of expressions. CCI are the base for free press, open society and citizen controlled democracy. CCI are innovators and change makers for the future of smart cities and green economy. If CCI are stalling, the Europe we know today will suffer a heart attack.

Given the severity of this European crisis ECBN issues this white paper with four scenarios where the CCI might stand by the end 2020 and from where we may have to restart the CCI.

This white paper aims to raise awareness that the restart of the Cultural Creative Industries is central to the future of European society. It calls on the European policy makers to engage in a vigorous debate for the best ways to restart the Cultural Creative Industries in a sustainable, innovative way to turn this historical system crisis to a once in a century chance to move forward to a more sustainable and inclusive Society than before.