2007-08-21

Over the last few decades, the culture and creative industries have become a major economic force. The creative industries, a complex of eleven economic sectors, aroused a lot of attention in 2006 due to its surprisingly high turnover and growth figures. The culture and creative industries subsequently gained a new importance on the political agenda in the Lisbon process for the strengthening of economic growth in Europe as well as in the UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity, which was ratified by Germany in February 2007. At the beginning of the German EU Presidency in 2007, the German Federal Government placed the issue of culture and creative industries on the agenda of the informal meeting of the European Ministers of Culture in Berlin.