Arts Officials Urge the European Commission to Rethink the ‘Deeply Disappointing’ Provisions for Culture in Its New €750 Billion Recovery Plan

European Union officials are
urging the government’s executive branch to increase support for
culture in its new €750 billion ($826 billion) recovery
plan. 

The European Commission
announced an ambitious seven-year budget yesterday to bail out the
EU’s 27 member states from the economic impact of COVID-19, but
culture representatives say it fails to provide enough protection
for their industry, which is one of the economic sectors that has
been hardest hit by the pandemic.

The new aid package, dubbed
“Next Generation EU,” plans to jumpstart the economy with the €750
billion injection, as well as targeted reinforcements to the
long-term EU budget for 2021-2027, which the Commission says in a
statement “will bring the total financial firepower of the EU
budget to €1.85 trillion” ($2 trillion).

While the new plan details
ambitious provisions for a new Green Deal and digital transitions,
some representatives have criticized the budget cuts to cultural
initiatives. Cultural officials have warned that cuts to three
programs—Erasmus+, Creative
Europe, and European Solidarity Corps—are “bad news for young
people,” and send a “terrible message” to the cultural, creative,
and media sectors.

In a statement reacting to the
proposed budget yesterday, representatives of all three programs,
including the chair of the
EU’s culture and education committee, Sabine Verheyen, expressed
their disappointment.

“While the Commission’s proposed
recovery plan has a lot going for it, the specific figures for the
education, culture, and youth programs are deeply disappointing and
simply not in line with the statement by the Commission President
on the importance of future generations, along with education and
culture,” they write.

While the proposed budget for
all three programs has increased since the most recent proposal put
forward by the European Council president Charles Michel in
February, they call this an “unacceptable baseline,” and highlight
the discrepancy in the figures from the institution’s original
proposal for the 2021-2027 budget back in 2018, which were much
higher. “Since when does the Commission call decreases increases?”
they ask.

The representatives specifically
called out the decreased budget for Creative Europe, the only EU
program that directly supports Europe’s culture and creative
sectors. They write that the pandemic has “ravaged” these sectors
across Europe, and that the new proposal “ignores this impact
completely.”

Earlier this month, Verheyen
called for the Commission to double the budget for Creative Europe,
arguing that the intergovernmental economic organization
OECD’s estimates in
March that recreation
and culture spending would drop by just 10 percent were “wildly
optimistic,” adding, “many small organizations and individuals face
ruin and Europe risks losing its heart and soul.”

The statement also accuses the
institution of creating false expectations, pointing out that the
Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen promised to support the
call to triple the budget for Erasmus+, which is a student exchange
program, in July last year.

While the officials admit that
there is “much to praise” in the institution’s ambitious recovery
plan, they urge it to “think again” when it comes to support for
culture, education, and youth programs. “The Committee on Culture
and Education will continue to fight for a budget that shows the
necessary ambition and can make a real difference to these sectors,
not just now, but for the next seven years.”

The new budget period will begin
on January 1, but all 27 member states must first agree on the
budget before it can take effect. While it has seen positive
responses from economic powerhouses France and Germany, some of the
more frugal nations, including Austria and Sweden, could still
oppose the plan to borrow the money on the financial markets and
embedding the debt into the next long-term budget.

The post Arts Officials Urge the European Commission to
Rethink the ‘Deeply Disappointing’ Provisions for Culture in Its
New €750 Billion Recovery Plan appeared first on artnet
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