2023-12-15 13:21:27
After the Berlin House of Representatives voted on Thursday after a twelve-hour debate Double budget for 2024 and 2025 decided with the votes of the black-red coalition, the cultural budget for the period has now been determined. The Senator for Culture and Social Cohesion, Joe Chialo (CDU), sent one on Friday morning Press release, according to which the planned expenditure is higher than ever and exceeds the billion mark. Accordingly, 1,006 million euros are available for 2024 and 1,055 million euros for 2025. Chialo’s budget comprises around two and a half percent of the approved double budget with planned expenditure of 39.3 or 40.5 billion euros. In 2023 it was around 918 million euros, but the department was tailored differently under Chialo’s predecessor, the left-wing politician Klaus Lederer, which is why the numbers cannot be compared directly.
The Senator for Culture thanks Parliament for the intensive debates; the hard work was worth it. “However, the challenges have also grown,” says Chialo. “Overlapping crises, rising prices and the need to catch up in digitalization do not spare our city’s cultural scene.”
In order to achieve the goal stated in the coalition agreement with the keyword “good work”, the wage increases at all institutionally funded cultural institutions will be absorbed so that the increasing personnel costs do not have to be covered by the artistic budget. This costs a total of 39 million euros in both years. In order to increase the minimum wages, the institutions will be supported with an additional 1.5 million.
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The independent scene also receives more money in order to alleviate the increased cost pressure caused by the increased lower fee limits and exhibition fees. One million euros will be available for this in 2024 and two million in 2025. In an open letter, representatives of the independent scene complained that the funding rate had fallen sharply because structurally increased personnel costs were not adequately offset in the contract volume.
Other subject areas for which “significant resources” would be made available serve to structurally strengthen, for example, memorial sites and culture of remembrance, cultural mediation and digital change. A new democracy fund for social cohesion is worth ten million euros.
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