Draft Recovery Plan, crumbs to culture: 1.6% of total, is the least funded sector

The draft of the "National Recovery and Resilience Plan“ (PNRR), also known journalistically as the ”Recovery Plan," or the investment plan of the 196 billion euros Italy will get from Next Generation EU funds (the so-called “Recovery Fund”), has been released in recent hours. The plan the government is working on is divided into six sections: digitization, innovation, competitiveness and culture (48.7 billion), green revolution and ecological transition (74.3), infrastructure and sustainable mobility (27.7), education and research (19.2), gender equality, social and territorial cohesion (17.1) and health (9).

Culture is included under the digitization section, and is the least funded sector overall, since it will have to make do with only 3.1 billion, 1.6 percent of the total, and will also have to share this sum with tourism. The digitization section is funded with 10.1 billion to digitization, innovation and security in PA, 35.5 to innovation, competitiveness, digitization 4.0 and internationalization, 3.1 to culture and tourism; for the green revolution, 6.3 billion goes to green enterprise and circular economy, 18.5 to energy transition and sustainable local mobility, 40.1 to energy efficiency and building upgrading, and 9.4 to land and water resource protection and enhancement; for infrastructure, 23.6 billion will be spent on high-speed rail and road maintenance and 4.1 on intermodality and integrated logistics; in education and research, 10.1 goes to strengthening teaching and the right to study, 9.1 to a category “from research to enterprise”; for gender equality and social cohesion, 4.2 billion is allocated for gender equality, 3.2 for youth and labor policies, 5.9 for vulnerability, social inclusion, sports and the third sector, 3.8 for special interventions for territorial cohesion; finally, for health, 4.8 billion goes to proximity care and telemedicine and 4.2 to innovation, research and digitization of health care.

The “culture and tourism” section contains, the draft says, “interventions in two of the sectors most affected by the pandemic that need specific support to accompany their recovery and strengthen their resilience for the future.” The crisis, the Recovery Plan draft explains, “has hit both sectors hard because of both the closure to the public of museums and other cultural institutions and places and, more generally, because of the blockage of tourist movements. According to estimates by the United Nations World Tourism Organization, international tourist arrivals in Europe fell by 58 percent between January and March 2020. In Italy, according to ISTAT estimates, the first wave of Covid-19 caused the loss of about one-fifth of the expected tourist arrivals for the whole of 2020 in the March-May quarter; looking ahead, the renewed impetus of the contagion is likely to cause further damage to tourist arrivals and, consequently, to the turnover of tourism businesses in the winter season.” According to the draft, therefore, “it is confirmed as a priority for Italy to ensure in the short term the resilience of the cultural demand index in order to increase it in the medium term (before the outbreak of the pandemic, the expenditure of Italian families alone on recreation and culture stood at 6.7 percent, compared to a European average of 8.7 percent), while at the same time relaunching the fruition - including digital - of the places of tourism and culture.”

There will be two areas of intervention in the “culture and tourism” sector: in order of how they are presented in the draft, the first is Enhancement of training and tourism supply, and the second is Enhancement and protection of cultural heritage. Among the planned interventions is the “Cultural Heritage for Next Generation” program, which aims to initiate “a profound digitization of cultural heritage (with the use of advanced digital technologies, computerized archives and catalogs will be completed), to promote widespread and inclusive access to a wide range of subjects: citizens, students, researchers, cultural and creative industries,” and others; the strengthening of professional tourism training; and strategic interventions on “major cultural tourism attractors,” the draft says, “to encourage increased cultural demand for several attractors of national strategic importance (including: Venice Biennale, Milan’s European Library of Cultural Information, Trieste’s Porto Vecchio, Genoa’s system of forts, the Bourbon parks in Campania, Puglia’s coastal park of culture, tourism and environment, and the Auditorium to be built at the former tobacco factory in Palermo).”

Interventions will then be launched to restore “sites of inestimable landscape and cultural value,” including in inland areas of the country, which are often neglected or little known because they are off the traditional tourist circuits. It will also intervene, the draft reads, “on small historic and rural villages, with specific and targeted actions on the historical-cultural and religious heritage (abbeys, rural churches and shrines). This will also meet the needs of the large Italian community living abroad, to foster and nurture the strong bond with our country and its small villages, the natural destination of their tourist and cultural demand, encouraging a ’tourism of origins’.” Action will be taken, the government points out, “respecting the identity and typical characteristics of the different local contexts also through a new model of sustainable tourism capable of enhancing in an integrated way the resources of the territories and favoring the deseasonalization of tourist demand. And these actions will help the revitalization of commercial activities, the enhancement of traditional agri-food and craft productions linked to local knowledge and techniques.”

Thus, some of the projects that had been proposed this summer, when MiBACT had put forward 10 proposals for a countervalue of 7 billion euros, come out of the draft Recovery Plan: there is no trace in the draft of the earthquake-proofing plan for buildings of worship, the national integrated system of monitoring and risk prevention for Italian cultural sites and places, the internationalization of cinema and audiovisual. The MiBACT’s sights will also have to be scaled down, since, for the digitization of cultural heritage alone, the draft called for the investment of 2.5 billion euros over three years. The draft, it turns out, provides 3.1 billion for the entire sector, and to be shared with tourism.

Draft Recovery Plan, crumbs to culture: 1.6% of total, is the least funded sector

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