In the past decade discussion has largely revolved around the issue of the amount of support for culture provided by the state, which has been reduced several times and only in recent years has begun to increase again. This complex situation has not benefited either from the fact that there has been a substantial increase in VAT in recent years. Since January 2012 the lower VAT rate has risen from 10% to 14%, the list of items subject to VAT has remained unchanged. The basic rate remained at 20%. The rate was supposed to be changed to a uniform 17.5% from January 2013. However, in the end the government agreed to increase both rates by just one percentage point, from 14% to 15% and from 20% to 21%. The dramatic increase in VAT in recent years has had a huge impact on the cultural sector because many items were originally subject to the lower VAT rate. The new Government in 2014 promised a lower VAT rate would be re-introduced from January 2015 set at 10%, which would apply to children’s food and books as well as medicine, and it did as promised (see also chapter 4.1.4.).
Debates and the development of new civic initiatives revolve around financial issues, but also around the lack of transparency in the tender procedures for so-called priority activities at the MC, the grant selection procedures at the municipal level, or the selection procedures for appointing directors of cultural institutions.
The year 2014 also ushered in a fundamental change in connection with the new Civil Code (Act No. 89/2012 Coll.). The old Civil Code was replaced with an entirely new set of legislation that unites all the legislation in the area of civil law into a single code. As soon as the new Civil Code came into effect the Commercial Code (Act No. 513/1991 Coll.), for instance, became a thing of the past.
The year 2021 saw the twentieth change in the post of Minister of Culture since 1989. The swift succession of alternating ministers in previous years was accompanied also by a large turnover in personnel occupying lower posts in the Ministry of Culture and has had the effect of disrupting continuity and strategic thinking at the MC. Compounding this has been the annual decrease in the amount of resources directed into the sector of culture.
The pandemic crisis and several lockdowns that have impacted the creative sector since March 2020 have significantly influenced the change in the perception of culture, thus political culture in the CR as well. With the onset of COVID-19 in 2020, the hidden problems in culture started to appear as they remained unsolved since the 1990s within the independent cultural sector. The MC primarily took care of its cultural organisations and non-profit sector through subsidy programmes. The onset of the pandemic immediately proved that the cultural ecosystem is much larger and there are many associated jobs that helped culture run and there is a big sector of commercial art that has never asked for any public support. It also proved that the most affected entities are not cultural organisations, but individual artists, who, as the self-employed, participate in both non-commercial and commercial sectors, work in public institutions and small NGOs. They combine their jobs and income.
The period from the onset of the pandemic has seen many fundamental changes. The first one was undoubtedly the emergence of other professional associations that tried to unite their members from various parts of the sector, fields, and genres. For example, the Czech Music Community was founded to make a connection between non-classical and classical music and technical jobs for the first time since 1990. The second fundamental change was the fact that the MC has begun to discuss the matters with professional associations and platforms and has set a regular system of consultation of documents that are prepared at the state level and associated with healthcare measures at cultural events or compensations for artists and cultural workers.
The strategic tasks and the presence of professional organisations and platforms in the preparation process have been demonstrated in the draft of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (hereinafter referred to as the NRRP) for the CR. Seven key initiatives regarding the parts dedicated to culture in the NRRP correspond with the main objectives of the State Cultural Policy 2021-2025+.
The Government of the CR approved the first package of support to help save culture in the amount of 1.07 billion CZK, which was primarily intended to help support contributory organisations of the state and the municipalities and entities that in the past were already supported with state funding. This package also included a special call for proposals (for projects) supporting access to the arts via digital media in the amount of 30 million CZK.
Other measures that were adopted applied to the entire culture sector. The Ministry of Culture passed a bill, No. 247/2020 Coll., on some measures to mitigate the effects of the pandemic of the Coronavirus called SARS CoV-2 in the area of cultural events. It was made possible for organisers of cultural events to issue vouchers for a cultural event instead of refunding an admission fee.
In June the Government of the Czech Republic approved a reduction in the rate of VAT on admission/entrance fees from 15% to 10%. It then approved a special grant programme to support business entities in the culture sector, the ‘COVID-CULTURE’ programme for cultural and creative industries, which was prepared jointly by the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Culture. This was an unprecedented step of a joint programme being created in the culture sector by two ministries.
COVID-19 ushered in a general paradigm shift. Over the course of the crisis the Ministry of Culture progressed from its initial support aimed mainly at entities that had already been supported in the past to opening up a more intensive dialogue and providing support for the entire cultural sector across both its commercial and non-commercial branches.
One of the by-products of the crisis is that it has become apparent that there is a need to define the status of artists in the CR, which has not yet been defined. In this connection the MC initiated the step of dealing with this issue in the new State Cultural Policy and NRRP (see also 1.1).
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