Count: if we don't help culture and tourism unlikely to expand when emergency over

There was also room for culture and tourism in the traditional end-of-year press conference of the Prime Minister, during which the premier answers questions from journalists. The only question focused on the topic was the last one of the press meeting, which came after two hours and forty minutes, and was formulated by journalist Domenico Cavazzino of Stampa Italiana, who specifically asked President Giuseppe Conte what measures the government is thinking about to boost the tourism-culture sector, in light of the data released by Enit, according to which a return of 2019 tourist flows will only occur in 2023.

“I welcome a question on tourism, culture, entertainment,” Conte said, “because we have to recognize that they are among the sectors that in general have been most affected by the pandemic event. Then in so many other sectors there is so much suffering that is concentrated, but perhaps never before have these sectors been as widely affected by the negative consequences of the pandemic as others: this is the reason why we have allocated 11 billion in total interventions to counteract, precisely, the dramatic effects of the pandemic. There have been about sixty measures by Minister Franceschini and MiBACT in this area, to which we can then add the general measures (I am thinking of the special ordinary redundancy fund, wage supplementary funds, non-repayable grants, special tax credits, and so on). But here we have to keep working in this direction, we have to keep investing, to explain why the data are enough: we had 57 million domestic and international tourists in 2020 while they were twice as many in 2019. According to Confturismo, Covid has cost the entire tourism sector and allied industries approximately 100 billion in lost production value. If we then also reason with regard to the culture sector, cinema, entertainment, these are sectors that have been severely affected. We have done a lot, we have intervened extensively, because there has been difficulty here, just think of the benefits for all seasonal workers (in these sectors where we have also intervened for intermittent workers, those on temporary contracts and so on). We still have to intervene, continue to follow it up with measures for cities of art, for historic centers, for centers with a religious tourist vocation, but not only that, we still have to work because it is clear that if this sector, which in itself also shows resilient qualities, is not helped at this time, it will be difficult to re-exploit immediately where the most acute impact of the pandemic will then end.”

Before that, Conte had also been asked a more specific question about the date of possible reopenings: Marco Corrado Billeci of Fanpage, in asking the premier whether the system of yellow, orange, and red zones will be confirmed until April (and the prime minister answered in the affirmative: it will be confirmed in the current line if the variants of the virus do not cause higher levels of contagiousness, and in the latter case evaluations will be made on the ongoing restrictive measures), also explicitly asked him if the closures of activities such as cinemas, theaters, and gyms will remain in place as of January 15. Conte did not respond specifically, however.

Count: if we don't help culture and tourism unlikely to expand when emergency over

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