Culture in the face of European funds

The awaited European funds for post-pandemic recovery must serve to resolve the eternal structural deficits of the culture sector. This was one of the main conclusions of a meeting at the Cercle d'Economia that brought together four public managers of cultural policies: Mariachiara Esposito, from the European Commission; Dulce Campos, from the Ministry of Culture; Francesc Vilaró, from the Generalitat, and Xavier Marcé, from the Barcelona City Council.

The culture sector is highly atomized into many small companies with highly professional workers, but which, with exceptions, have very limited business and financial capacity. This fact creates a deficit of sustainable business models that end up surviving thanks to public subsidies. Indeed, it is necessary to tackle this problem, with training and strategies to incorporate private financing into the sector.

The four speakers agreed that efforts to attract European funds must focus, in effect, on the structural transformation of the sector. But the truth is that the debate provided little more of substance, as the current lack of a regulatory framework to order and regulate access to these aids means that the entire process is currently plunged into great uncertainty.

Marcé was, in my opinion, the most accurate in his proposals. Not in vain was he the only politician, a councilor of the Barcelona City Council and with a long career in the cultural sector, both from the public and private spheres. The rest were officials from their respective administrations whose work will basically focus on the management and channeling of aid. In contrast, the role of the Barcelona city council will be that of a final recipient of funds for some of its projects.

Thus, the representatives of the European Commission, the ministry, and the Generalitat limited themselves to speaking in generalities and stating obvious facts such as the aforementioned structural deficit but without proposing concrete solutions. Marcé highlighted this and advocated for the urgency of establishing a system that prioritizes actions to obtain funds. He warned of another deficit: our country's and the sector's particular lack of tradition in competing for aid funds in Europe.

For Marcé, it is essential to "coordinate objectives and group projects" to compete effectively, with greater opportunities and to opt for projects that are truly necessary. This, according to the councilor, will be the key to success. Everyone also advocated for a transversal strategy, linking cultural projects with other areas such as digitalization and the modernization of SMEs. In this sense, Marcé gave the example that Barcelona's tourist transformation must necessarily go through culture. The representative of the Generalitat summarized everything in a very clarifying phrase: "It's not just about fixing what the pandemic has spoiled, we have to go further."

All speakers agreed on the demand for culture to have a greater weight in the distribution of aid planned in the Next Generation program

In conclusion, the European Union aid funds are perceived as the vehicle for recovery. Culture and the rest of the sectors hit by the COVID crisis are entrusted to them. But Marcé warns of the aforementioned slowness in defining a regulatory framework and, above all, of the high expectations generated that will lead many to frustration. And he added that, in the end, these are not going to be stable funds with which to design future budgets, but rather conjunctural ones. Hence the importance of taking advantage of them to tackle underlying problems so that they provide future value.