The study, by Paris-based TERA Consultants for the International Chamber of Commerce, focused on piracy in Europe's music, film, television and software industries.
Those industries generated €860 billion and employed 14.4 million people in 2008. But in the same year, €10 billion and 186,000 jobs were lost to piracy, the study found.
If that trend continues – and the rapid increase in illegal downloads and advancing piracy techniques suggest it will – then up to 1.2 million jobs and €240 billion worth of European commerce could be wiped out by 2015.
"In the near future and even today in 2010, we observe increasing bandwidth, increasing penetration rate in terms of the Internet," said TERA Consultants' Patrice Geoffron, explaining that piracy was likely to increase.
The bulk of illegal downloading targets music, television and video sites, with consumers using 'peer-to-peer' formats to download songs and video clips onto their laptops and home computers from websites without paying a fee.
In that respect it has a disproportionate impact on the creative industries, with musicians, actors and artists standing to lose the most from unfettered downloading, experts say.
Agnete Haaland, president of the International Actors' Federation, believes consumers need to be made more aware of the damaging economic and social impact of their illegal activity.
"Consumers have to understand that there will be nothing to consume if it's impossible to make money making the content," she said.
Haaland, whose group supported the study, said one of the best ways to reverse the situation would be stricter EU legislation to enforce existing laws against piracy.
Marielle Gallo, a member of the European Parliament who is pushing for tighter laws on intellectual property, said the report showed how much damage could be done to industry.
But she said it would be tough to secure passage of stricter rules as several parliamentary groups are strongly opposed.
(EurActiv with Reuters.)
