Counting as Leverage: France’s Creative Economy and the Politics of Aggregation
France’s €102.7 billion cultural sector is more than an economic milestone. The consolidation of creative industries into a single macroeconomic bloc reshapes bargaining power, internal hierarchy, and the terms of cultural governance.
In late 2025, the Panorama des Industries Culturelles et Créatives 2025 was published by the Ministry of Culture, prepared in partnership with EY. The most widely circulated figure — €102.7 billion — represents reported revenue for France’s cultural and creative industries in 2024. The report attributes €43.1 billion in direct value added to the sector and counts 586,000 direct jobs, rising to more than one million when indirect and induced employment are included. Together, these activities account for roughly 2.9 percent of national GDP.
The scale is significant. The consolidation is more so.
Ten domains — visual arts and heritage, audiovisual production, cinema, video games, music, performing arts, publishing, press, radio and advertising — are grouped into a single economic bloc. That bloc is presented as measurable, coherent and strategically relevant. In administrative terms, it becomes legible to Treasury logic, export policy and industrial planning.
Value added is calculated through national accounting methods estimating sectoral contribution to GDP. Indirect and induced employment figures are derived through multiplier modelling, projecting spillover effects across supply chains and household spending. Such techniques are standard in macroeconomic analysis. They are also model-dependent: multiplier assumptions vary by sectoral density, regional concentration and input-output calibration. The magnitude of the bloc depends in part on where its boundaries are drawn.
The ICC category is therefore not a neutral reflection of economic reality. It is an administrative settlement.
Within that settlement, high-growth audiovisual firms, advertising conglomerates and globally competitive gaming studios sit alongside freelance visual artists, publicly subsidised theatres and regional heritage institutions. Commercial segments account for a disproportionate share of aggregate revenue expansion. Non-commercial performing arts and heritage, despite their inclusion in the growth figure, remain structurally reliant on public subsidy.
Aggregation strengthens the bloc. It does not resolve its differentiation.
This internal tension is not merely theoretical. Representatives of publicly funded performing arts networks and visual arts organisations have, in recent years, cautioned that macroeconomic framing risks obscuring the continued subsidy dependence of non-commercial cultural production. The concern is not opposition to measurement itself. It is that growth narratives anchored in export-driven segments may recalibrate funding expectations across the board.
The consolidation produces leverage. A €102.7 billion sector cannot easily be characterised as peripheral. It enters fiscal negotiation with statistical weight. The Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs already identifies cultural and creative industries as a priority export family; the Panorama reinforces that positioning with macroeconomic evidence.
But leverage redistributes visibility.
Segments with scalable, internationally competitive output become statistical anchors of the bloc. Their trajectories shape the macroeconomic identity of the sector. Smaller or subsidy-reliant domains benefit from inclusion in a powerful aggregate, yet they do not necessarily define its narrative. Contribution becomes easier to demonstrate than fragility.
For consolidation to function politically, constituent sectors must accept representation through a shared economic frame. That frame privileges contribution over dependency, scale over vulnerability. It offers protection in budget negotiations. It also narrows the language through which need is articulated.
Survey material associated with the Panorama indicates continued concern within parts of the sector regarding funding sufficiency and exposure to public spending constraints. Macro-scale stability coexists with micro-scale strain. Statistical robustness does not translate automatically into operational security.
Once cultural production is integrated into GDP accounting and employment metrics, arguments for support can be framed in terms of contribution and competitiveness. At the same time, integration invites evaluation. Growth rates, export performance and productivity begin to circulate alongside artistic criteria and public mission. Economic recognition strengthens defence. It also adjusts expectation.
The French model addresses a visibility problem that has long limited cultural policy leverage. Culture now enters macroeconomic planning as measurable infrastructure rather than symbolic exception. The Panorama functions as a negotiation instrument between the sector and the state, consolidating fragmented domains into a category capable of participating in industrial strategy.
What remains unsettled is how that category will hold under pressure.
Budget allocation, tax reform, regional redistribution and targeted subsidy design will expose the internal hierarchy embedded within the aggregate. When growth in export-driven audiovisual production is cited in fiscal debate, publicly subsidised theatres and regional heritage institutions will still negotiate on different economic terms.
The numbers stabilise the category.
They do not prevent internal divergence from reappearing in the next funding round.
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