Ministery: We are preparing a more transparent grant system

Prague - The Ministry of Culture is returning to the grant management system that was established during the tenure of former office head Pavel Dostál. "The new leadership has supplemented this system with more transparent rules in closer collaboration with the expert public," said Milan Kupka, the director of the minister's secretariat, to ČTK. Minister Martin Štěpánek signed a new statute for committees that oversee grant selection processes on Monday. The grant committees, which had been in operation for several years, were abolished by Štěpánek's predecessor, Vítězslav Jandák, who intended to establish ministerial colleges to decide on the amount of individual grants.
    Funds for grant management come from the Ministry of Culture's budget through the Cultural Activities program. This is the only key program at the Ministry of Culture for funding non-state cultural activities. According to estimates from the Council of Artistic Communities and the Initiative for Culture, which were involved last year in discussions about the state budget, the program has been lacking 300 million crowns annually for several years. Last year, it was increased by one hundred million crowns only after long protests from part of the artistic community and intervention by two MPs during the budget discussion in the Chamber of Deputies.
    Although the Cultural Activities program is the only program supporting non-state entities, for years, state-funded organizations have also received funding beyond their standard income. From this budget, contributions are given to events such as the Prague Quadrennial or the Venice Biennale, funds are reserved for the minister's discretion, and for other projects that do not go through a selection process but receive direct support.
    Only a few million from Cultural Activities are allocated to festivals from various fields - in 2005, for instance, a total of 12 million crowns included 79 events throughout the Czech Republic. Therefore, one of the aims of the critics of the system was to exempt established international festivals from the grant management and support them separately. "The Ministry of Culture considers significant international festivals a priority, and therefore proposes their support during discussions on the state budget in the Chamber of Deputies. Based on the results, further steps regarding their support will be determined," Kupka told ČTK.
    The draft budget for the Ministry of Culture for next year initially planned for an amount of 6.6 billion crowns, which seemingly looks higher than this year's 6.3 billion crowns. However, if 1.2 billion crowns for church expenditures and approximately 600 million, which the ministry expects from the discontinued National Property Fund, are deducted from this amount, the state budget expenditures for culture next year will be 4.8 billion crowns. Overall, the funds are similar to this year's budget, but the difference is that the proposal significantly prioritizes support for state-funded organizations, increases ministry expenditures, while at the same time cutting funds for heritage programs or the Cultural Activities chapter. For this, the proposal planned for 221 million instead of this year's 434 million crowns. According to the Initiative for Culture, such a proposal would essentially dismantle the grant systems.
    In September, the government added 500 million to the Ministry of Culture's budget. However, it is still unclear where exactly this increase will be directed. The ministry now wants the budget to be increased by 80 million crowns for the mentioned support of significant artistic festivals. Deputy Adolf Toman, responsible for grant management, advocates increasing the Cultural Activities chapter by 95 million crowns precisely due to the - in his view - deeply underfunded grant processes. The final shape, however, depends on the parliamentary budget discussions.