Brussels, 14/04/2011 (Agence Europe) - Eurostat, the European Union statistical office, has just published statistics on culture which provide information on the cultural and artistic activities within member states. The publication, “Cultural Statistics”, includes chapters on cultural employment, enterprises and external trade, cultural expenditure and participation as well as a chapter on cultural sites and museums.
To summarise: 1) in the EU27, in 2009, 1.5 million people worked as writers or artists, equivalent to 0.7% of total employment. The highest numbers were recorded in Germany (330,000), the United Kingdom (200,000), France (180,000), Italy (120,000), the Netherlands (110,000) and Spain (100,000). Among member states, the proportion of writers or artists to total employment varied from 0.1% in Romania to 1.5% in Finland and Sweden; 2) during academic year 2007-2008, 725,000 students, or 3.8% of all tertiary students in the EU27, were studying arts. The United Kingdom (6.8%), Ireland (6.6%), Finland (5.6%) and Cyprus (5.5%) recorded the highest shares of tertiary students in arts; 3) cultural goods account for a larger share of EU exports than imports. In 2010, 0.6% of EU27 exports of goods and 0.4% of EU27 imports with the rest of the world were cultural goods. The United Kingdom (1.8%), Estonia (0.7%), France, Cyprus, Latvia and Austria (all 0.6%) had the highest shares of cultural goods in their total exports, and Austria (0.9%), Ireland and the United Kingdom (both 0.8%), Greece and Cyprus (both 0.7%) the largest shares in total imports; 4) with regard to prices of cultural goods and services (museums, concerts etc) in the EU27, prices of newspapers (+17.5%) and cultural services (+13.3%) increased more than the overall index (+11.9%) between 2005 and 2010, while book prices (+6.5%) rose less.
A Eurobarometer survey examined cross-cultural contacts in the EU27 in 2007. This showed that 27% of persons aged 15 and over had travelled abroad at least three times in the previous three years, 22% had family members living in another European country and 15% in a non-European country. Those who often watched television or films in foreign languages numbered 19%, those who read foreign-language newspapers 9% and those who read foreign books in their original language 7%. On the other hand, a quarter (27%) of the respondents said they had none of the cross-cultural contacts mentioned in the survey. The proportion of cross-cultural contacts varied considerably among member states, with Luxembourg on top for watching television or films (80%), reading books (49%) and newspapers (71%) in a foreign language. (I.L./transl.rt)