HS analysis|The cuts of the Ministry of Education and Culture target culture many times more than its share of the ministry’s budget would require, writes Vesa Sirén.
There is words and actions and often a contradiction between them.
The latest example can be found this week on the website of the Government.
On Tuesday, September 2, the Prime Minister was announced Petteri Orpon (kok) commissioned by the government cultural policy report 72-page draft. At the level of speeches and goals, it contains the most wonderful manna for lovers and creators of art and popular culture.
But on Wednesday, September 3, the government announced in his budget rush the new ones culture cuts.
They get even deeper.
Let’s repeat the basics: this year the state budget is 87.9 billion euros and next year almost a billion more, i.e. 88.8 billion euros.
Both amounts required additional debt, and thus additional money was obtained for, for example, welfare areas and so on to shooting ranges.
But not for the tiny cultural budget, which is just under seven percent of the Ministry of Education and Culture’s budget of more than eight billion euros.
Teaching– and it was decided to cut about ten million euros from the budget of the Ministry of Culture in the last budget. New surgery is sixfold at the level of the entire ministry, i.e. 60 million euros.
The appropriations for art and culture before the budget fiasco were around 556 million euros, i.e. after the last revisions, around 10 million euros less than the previous year.
Now it was decided on new cultural cuts of 17.4 million euros, in addition to the decision to halve the refund for private copying to 5.5 million euros already in the spring frame riot.
Allocations for art and culture will be reduced to 535 million euros in total, even before the cuts in the operating expenses of the agencies in the culture and art sector.
Yet in the previous budget, the decrease in cultural funds was partially inherited Sanna Marini (sd) on the government’s decisions and the end of temporary EU funding. With the Orpo board’s own decisions, an additional four million euros were cut from culture.
Compared to that, the deepening of the Orpo government’s new cultural cuts to 17.4 million euros is quite dramatic.
It must be remembered that the previous cuts already removed the purchase support for libraries for low-circulation quality literature, such as non-fiction, for example wholly.
Surgery also decreased by a record i.e. EUR 1.3 million in grants distributed by the Arts Promotion Center (Taike), which operates under the Ministry of Education and Culture.
From the new ones of the cuts, as much as 10.9 million euros will go to state contributions and grants for the performing arts and museums. It can know hard times for, for example, central theaters, museums and orchestras in the provinces.
6.5 million euros will be cut from state subsidies for the promotion of art and culture. It applies, for example, to grants distributed by Taike, the Finnish Film Foundation and the Finnish Museum Agency.
More precisely, the targeting of the cuts will be decided before the parliament’s budget hearing.
Pretty much moving the goalposts was shown by the Ministry of Finance, whose previous proposal for cuts by the Ministry of Education and Culture would have taken as much as 30 million euros from art and culture appropriations.
Compared to that, the actual cut of 17.4 million euros is of course “less”, but only the actual decisions are counted.
Besides: if the cuts of 60 million euros by the Ministry of Education and Culture had targeted culture to the extent that culture’s share of just under seven percent of the ministry’s budget requires, about four million euros would have been cut from culture.
Compared to that, the now decided cut of 17.4 million euros even seems anti-cultural.
After all, the Ministry of Labor and the Economy can provide a little consolation for the cultural sector.
Business Finland’s research and development funds are authorized to allocate nine million euros to “research and product development activities in creative fields”.
Tuesday according to the 72-page draft of the published cultural policy report, “the state supports culture more strongly than before and invests strategically in the development of cultural and creative sectors”.
The quantitative goal of the draft report is “to double the share of creative industries in the gross national product in the 2040s by improving financing and structures”.
The cultural cuts decided now have the opposite effect.
There is it is certainly true that the aim of the draft report is specifically in the decades after the current cultural cuts.
It is also
true that the draft cultural policy report contains not only useful statistics but also good strategic goals.
There is every reason to hope for their passage, when the draft moves forward after the statement and committee round to be decided by the plenary session of the parliament sometime next spring term.
Draft report important themes clearly did not have time to influence the decisions of the 2025 budget.
But if the parliament approves a report like this, the development of our culture should be clearly reflected in the decisions of next year’s budget tussle.
Otherwise, the contradiction between words and actions will only grow.
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