Thanks to the initiative of Sepsiszentgyörgy/Sfântu Gheorghe Mayor Árpád Antal, smaller Romanian cities will also receive funding from the government’s central budget, the mayor told Transylvanian news portal maszol.ro.
“A decades-long injustice has been righted by the new funding,” Antal said.
Previously, only designated national theaters received central funding, which put smaller cities at a disadvantage because they had to support their theaters from the municipal budget. This meant that these smaller theaters received significantly less money than the ones funded from state coffers. For example, over the past decade, cultural institutions of Kolozsvár/Cluj had a combined budget of EUR 100 million, while those in Sepsiszentgyörgy had only around EUR 20 million to operate.
But now, according to this year’s budget, cities that have their own theaters will have a dedicated funding of 3 percent of total national VAT revenues.
Romania has 38 theaters, of which nine have the “national” title, meaning their support comes from the central budget. While this new measure to also cover smaller theaters is only valid for the current year, Antal said he hoped it will establish a precedent to be followed in subsequent years as well.
Title image: The Tamási Áron Theater of Spesiszentgyörgy (source: sepsiszentgyorgy.info)
