The missing billion

The UK’s exports of cultural goods

Have we missed an opportunity to bring an extra EUR 1 billion in exports of cultural goods each year?

The European Commission’s statistics arm, Eurostat, recently released data on exports of cultural goods. This includes works of art (paintings etc), books, recorded media, films and games, and photography (a full list is here).

The EU is a strong market for the UK, and it held up relatively well during the financial crisis, but since 2005 it has seen a 16% fall in the total value (Germany saw a 15% fall; France a 6% fall).

But recent growth in the UK’s exports of culture goods has come from outside the EU — a 26% increase since 2005. The UK’s export growth since 2009 is particularly striking. As an absolute figure, we are a long way ahead of the comparator countries we have included — Germany and France.

And overall, the EU is not nearly as important a market for us in these areas as it is for the other countries. Because of our extra-EU growth, it is becoming less important. A quarter of our cultural goods exports are to the EU. In comparison, over two-thirds of German exports are.

There are two ways of looking at this. The first might be that, if this is the case, a decline in trade to the EU as a result of Brexit may not be a disaster as this is a relatively small proportion of overall trade.

A second (which we subscribe to) is that this data shows the huge missed opportunity that a stronger focus on European markets could have brought us. We made similar arguments here.

If we had seen the same growth with our EU trading partners that we have with the rest of the world, that would have resulted in an extra EUR 1 billion in exports each year. With Brexit, it looks even harder for the UK’s creative businesses to realise this opportunity.

- Callum Lee, Director