Moment of uncertainty for public culture in the Old Continent. The four main countries are applying scissors to their cultural institutions, which in the United Kingdom are taking on dramatic overtones: major London theater institutions have been left without a pound of aid, and the English National Opera has left the capital for Manchester. The city of Nottingham has scrapped the culture budget and closed its libraries. Meanwhile, in France, Rachida Dati, a former Sarkozysta signed by Macron, must cut 200 million from her budget, with Paris as the main loser. The German federal government has cut money for culture by 10% and left the 200 euros it gave for cultural consumption to those turning 18 at 100. Italy, the red lantern of European cultural spending, mounts exhibitions of Tolkien, Meloni's favorite, while the minister of the sector himself proposes eliminating 100 million in film aid because almost no one sees many films.
Alarmed by the unstoppable growth of the deficit and the bad rating that the rating agencies can give to its debt, the French Government has decreed a first package of budget cuts that severely affect cultural institutions. Subsidies will be reduced by a total of 204.3 million euros this year, approximately half of this amount in the “creation” chapter and the rest in “heritage” (maintenance of assets).
The city of Paris, always very pampered by the State, will have to tighten its belt. The two opera houses in the capital will see their funding reduced by six million euros; the Comédie Française, in five; the Louvre, in three. The Theater de la Colina and the National Dance Theater-Chaillot lose 500,000 euros each; the Philharmonic, 250,000. In the rest of the country sacrifices are also forced, although comparatively less than in Paris, due to the desire to rebalance.
The Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, found the snip fatal. Coming from the right, she was President Macron's star signing for the last Government. His anger was translated into furious messages to the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, and the head of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, which reached the press. The minister, who dreams of being mayor of Paris, also goes to kill with the current occupant of the position, Anne Hidalgo. The latter's team has accused Dati of attacking the capital to harm her rival.
The austerity cure is not only due to the difficult situation for the State's coffers, but also to the need to better manage the money dedicated to culture. The Court of Auditors, in a report dated March 20, denounced the lack of efficiency in the use of 3,000 million subsidies for the sector between 2012 and 2023, since “expenditure policy was prioritized rather than a logic of needs.” real”.
Budget discipline extends beyond culture, although some items will be preserved; for example, those that affect national defense, given the context of the war in Ukraine and the Russian threat. Macron keeps repeating that he is moving towards “a war economy.” An example is the colossal investment in the new nuclear aircraft carrier that will succeed the current Charles de Gaulle in 2038. This monster of the seas will cost 10 billion euros. That is not touched. Art, on the other hand, requires sacrifices. / Eusebio Val
Fourteen years of conservative rule have left official aid to the world of culture in a skeleton, forced the English National Opera (ENO) to move from London to Manchester and put numerous institutions (theaters, operas, museums, libraries) on the ropes. , ballets...).
Cultural subsidies to the English capital, through the Arts Council, have been cut this year to the order of 65 million euros, and prestigious organizations such as the Hampstead Theatre, the Donmar Warehouse and the Young Vic have been left without any type of support. support, becoming completely dependent on ticket income (the price of which has, as a consequence, skyrocketed) and the generosity of patrons. The inability to pay competitive salaries to artistic directors has meant that in many cases programming and the level of assistance suffer.
Neither the Royal Opera House (which has lost 10% of its aid), nor the Welsh National Opera or the Glyndebourne Opera (which will receive 50% less) have been spared from the cuts. Nor do London museums like the V
The cuts have not been distributed evenly. Just as some institutions have been completely saved from the scissors, others are suffering disproportionately and have been left without any subsidies. The Government's intention is to decentralize culture and partially move it from London to the provinces, but despite this all regions of the country are victims of austerity.
Not only have the funds of the Arts Council (the body through which subsidies are channeled) been reduced, but also the money given by the State to local councils, some of which (such as Birmingham) have gone bankrupt. As a consequence, towns such as Nottingham have announced the total elimination of their Culture budget and the closure of municipal libraries.
It is estimated that cultural aid has suffered a cut of between 25% and 33% since the conservatives came to power in 2010, around 200 million euros per year. A black legacy. / Rafael Ramos
One could imagine that Italy would be one of the countries in the European Union that allocates the most resources to culture, but nothing could be further from the truth. In the last three budget years, Italy has allocated less than 0.5% of total public spending to culture, and already in 2021, according to Eurostat data, it was the second-to-last country in Europe for state investments in the cultural sector. Everything happens at a time when the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, is convinced that for too long Italian culture has been a heritage rooted in the left and that is why she believes that the right must recover ground that Silvio Berlusconi voluntarily abandoned, centered only in his television empire. Meloni therefore appointed a Minister of Culture, the journalist Gennaro Sangiuliano, who is very interventionist, but who has had initiatives that have been highly criticized in Italy. For example, he has organized a huge exhibition on J.R.R. Tolkien, Meloni's favorite writer and an intellectual reference for the youth of the post-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), the political predecessor of the Brothers of Italy. In Italy, intellectuals often regret that the little cultural investment is only focused on preserving the endless heritage of the past and not on investing in artistic production. In the world of cinema they could not believe when in October, during an event to commemorate the first year of life of the far-right Executive, Minister Sangiuliano expressed his idea of cutting public funds dedicated to cinema, under the argument that There is a long line of films that almost no one sees, “films that receive millions in public aid and are seen by very few people.” Thus he defended himself from the criticism he had received for proposing to the Minister of Economy a cut of 100 million in the fund for the development of investments in the cinema and the audiovisual sector, his idea to contribute to the economic "efforts" for the budgets of this 2024. “The minister is not defending our house, which should also be his since he considers himself a man of culture,” director Paolo Sorrentino lamented then. / Anna Buj
The 2024 budgets in Germany include a spending adjustment in almost all items except defense, so the cultural section is also affected. However, it is complex to gauge the magnitude of the cuts because in Germany, a federal country, culture is the responsibility of the 16 länder (federated states), on which the vast majority of museums, theaters, concert halls and cultural institutions depend. . In the current context, a land may have chosen to save in a successful institution to better equip another with problems. At the federal level, there is an assistant ministry of Culture and Media – whose current head is the environmentalist Claudia Roth – with coordination tasks, and which manages the few federally owned institutions, including Deutsche Welle, a public radio and internet station for abroad. According to the budgets, Roth has 2,150 million euros to spend this year, which is 254 million less than in 2023. Symbolically, a federal cut that hurts is that of the KulturPass, an individual amount of 200 euros that the Government gave to those who turn 18 in 2023 to spend on books, audiovisual media and movie, concert and theater tickets. This year it is maintained, but the amount is reduced to 100 euros. Claudia Roth aspires for culture to be included in the Constitution as a “state objective”, but the länder, proud of their cultural competence, oppose it. / María-Paz López
