What Minister Sangiuliano will do: the programmatic lines of his government

What will Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano do at the start of his term? The incumbent of the Roman College laid out his programmatic lines at a hearing before the Culture Committees of the House and Senate on Thursday. An hour and a half of intervention to talk about extremely important issues: the PNRR, the hiring of new recruits at the Ministry, the extension of the Art Bonus, and deductions for spending on culture. Let’s see in detail.

On the PNRR, Sangiuliano says that “it can make us make a leap in quality and quantity in the management of our assets. I have a duty to carry forward the PNRR as it has been configured in its broad outlines, if it is possible to adjust a few small things we will make some adjustments, but the main structure must be preserved and must be carried forward, otherwise the risk is to lose the funds.” Sangiuliano indicated as a top priority “the implementation of the investments of the PNRR, respecting the planned timeframe and objectives. Indeed, we cannot lose the resources allocated to culture and Italy as a whole. A necessary premise: this is a plan developed by the governments that have preceded us, with some contents that I feel I subscribe to and others that instead raise some perplexities, especially in implementation.” According to the minister, “all the investments envisaged by the NRP have entered full implementation, as the procedures for the reconnaissance and identification of interventions under MiC ownership have already been completed. Procedures have already been completed for the evaluation of applications submitted following public notices for the purpose of selecting non-state public implementers (mainly Local Authorities) and private entities. Some Public Notices are currently open or applications received are being evaluated and other Notices are forthcoming. All the targets set for the June 30, 2022 date have been met and the first audits conducted by the MEF have been successfully passed.”

Still in relation to the NRP, but on the subject of Recovery Art, or the plan to create repositories to manage cultural assets during emergencies, Sangiuliano said that “the project envisaged the creation of three of these sites in the former nuclear power plants of Caorso, Bosco Marengo and Garigliano. Verifications carried out with Sogin, however, revealed, as for Caorso, conditions that were not compatible with the project. Therefore, an alternative site in Palmanova was identified. Significant savings will be possible on this operation, to be used to cover the general price increase, with regard to the site to be built at the former Cerimant barracks in Rome, for which resources had also been allocated for other purposes. For information, the fifth site is the Casermette site in the province of Macerata.”

Regarding new hires, the minister said, “I have just signed a ministerial decree, which is in the process of being registered, to update the ministry’s staffing plan. According to this measure, the national headcount is 18,854, divided among 323 units in the operators area, 12,944 in the assistants area, and 5587 in the officials area. The de facto headcount, however, is far lower and stands at 10984 units, a full 7870 less than planned: we have 230 operators (-93), 7650 assistants (-5294) and 3104 officials (-2483). The authorized or initiated recruitment procedures will bring, between now and 2024, 3633 more units, 2394 of which are in the assistant area and 1157 in the officials area. An important but not decisive increase. In addition to these, 82 managers will be hired, including technical and generalists. At present, in the Ministry, there are only 69 out of 192 tenured managers in the second tier: the goal is to bring the allocation of positions back to the physiological membership of management roles, limiting the use of external figures to a few specific cases. (In contrast, in the first band, tenured managers in the same band are 6 out of 27, but many of these assignments are physiologically attributed to managers in the second band.) Therefore, we need to bring the Ministry’s staffing level back to an appropriate size. In addition, we need to make the work in the offices, museums, libraries, and superintendencies attractive by ensuring a salary level appropriate to the preparation and functions performed by the staff, most of whom are highly valued specialists. To date, however, this is not the case, and many competition winners even give up taking up service.” Still on the subject of labor, a passage of the speech was also devoted to the precariousness of artists: “We need to increase the sense of social security of what is by its nature precarious work. The state must take charge of greater social security and social security for artists, to be in step with Europe.”

Much discussed was the idea of opening new museums to house works from the deposits (“we could think of an ’Uffizi 2’ in Florence or another city in Tuscany or even on the international front as the Louvre in Paris has done, or we can think of the Archaeological Museum in Naples having a second space in Palazzo Fuga. That would be a useful work,” the minister said). As for the issue of museum enhancement, opening up to private individuals: “a mixed public-private system is needed to get out of inertia and give maximum concretization to the nation’s cultural potential, opening, enhancing and promoting every museum, monumental and archaeological space. A time shared with associations and entities in order to promote culture, where ownership and profitability are public but integrated with the private sector in order to multiply the offer and involve the private sector in high quality maintenance according to the stipulated agreements.”

Also among the issues discussed was the possible introduction of a paid ticket for the Pantheon (“The most visited state site, with 9 million 330 thousand visitors in 2019, is not a paid museum, but the Pantheon, which still has free admission. A 2016 agreement with the Diocese of Rome had provided for the introduction of an entrance fee of only two euros, fully respecting the worship functions of the place, which has also been a church for 1,400 years: that agreement, which could have brought valuable resources for the restoration of this and other monuments, was never implemented. and could be implemented.”) and the need to combat overcrowding in cities of art, which “have been suffering for years from an abandonment of residents and a widespread transformation of their built fabric into structures destined for tourist-hotel receptivity, in the various forms (B&Bs, apartments, hotels, luxury hotels, etc.) accompanied by forms of occupation for commercial uses of public spaces that are totally improper in relation to the historical and artistic values of the same. The ease of mobility introduced with low-cost flights, trains, ships and by car, bring thousands of tourists every day who frequent only the iconic places of cities, procuring overcrowding of some monumental sites that are proving detrimental to the preservation of cultural heritage. It is therefore necessary to identify and share with local institutions and communities preventive strategies and solutions.”

Then there is the issue of global warming: “With reference to climate change, the occurrence of extreme weather events due to global warming has also had damaging effects on cultural heritage, particularly monumental and archaeological heritage. Therefore, it is necessary to outline the cognitive framework and define programs for adequate and lasting maintenance, adaptation and protection of the built environment as a whole. The concept of environment, in fact, should not be limited to the natural environment, but extended to the man-made environment, which bears the signs of our civilization and, like the natural one, should be protected and defended.”

On the other hand, as for the Art Bonus discourse, Gennaro Sangiuliano believes “the extension of the Art Bonus to the private sector (cultural institutes, foundations and companies) is urgent and necessary, expanding the number of beneficiaries of the tax credit.” The minister also spoke about historical residences (“The protection of the enormous architectural, historical and cultural heritage represented by historical residences requires precise actions such as defiscalization policies for interventions and the creation of new networks of tourist attraction.”), historical re- enactments (“We must open and help associations related to historical re-enactments, capable of enhancing the past and the life of our cities of art. Reenactment is a time to promote territories and traditions. The Historical Reenactment Fund must expand its quantity.”) and culture as a tool of diplomacy (“Italy is a cultural super-power that has in its heritage and in its most varied cultural expressions an extraordinary tool of international diplomacy. We must put it to good use to affirm and promote our identity abroad and contribute to the socio-economic development of the nation. We must do so in the multilateral forums we are proudly part of, from the European Union to UNESCO to the G7/G20. And in bilateral relations, starting with those with our European and Atlantic allies and then embracing all regional quadrants, where we can rely on the evocative power of our exceptional cultural heritage. In the EU sphere, we will work to strengthen the coordination of member countries’ cultural policies under the ”culture plan 2023-2026“ in whose approval I personally participated on Tuesday. It will be our task to enhance common historical, religious and social roots and promote common values while always keeping in mind, when necessary, the protection of national interest. We will work with community institutions to fully, quickly and effectively implement the ”culture“ dimension of our national recovery and resilience plan. And in general to seize all those opportunities for development, employment and training for our culture workers that come from EU funding.”)

A particularly important issue is that of the deduction of cultural consumption: “After careful evaluation of the economic effects, which must first and foremost benefit the end consumer, we can consider introducing into the tax system a mechanism for deducting expenses for the purchase of cultural goods and services along with lowering VAT on some of these products. This is in the knowledge that the art and culture industry in Italy sets in motion a production chain and a very important number of workers.” And still on the subject of taxation, Sangiuliano spoke about tax credit for video games: “The video game industry in Italy represents a highly specialized sector in the technological, artistic and design fields, with about 2 billion induced revenues. A cultural product that assumes centrality especially at this stage of public intervention in the processes of digitization of assets. One can think about strengthening the tax credit for the video game industry now provided by the Ministry of Culture, increasing its capacity.”

A final step, finally, for music and cinema, starting with the Fondo Unico per lo Spettacolo (FUS), which will change its name and be called the “National Fund for the Performing Arts,” and for which “the regulatory mechanisms regarding the approval process of projects and the disbursement of contributions will be reviewed. It is necessary, on the one hand, to increase preventive and subsequent controls on effective use of the FUS and, on the other hand, to change the parameters from a rewarding perspective. Currently the FUS rewards quantity and not quality. Moreover, we can say that it rewards the liabilities of institutions. The view should be diametrically opposed: the more you are able to raise funds other than public funds and the more virtuous the management, the more it should be rewarded. Industry practitioners and leading research centers, including the prestigious Bruno Leoni Institute, claim that the disbursement of FUS funds is tainted by improper allocation. The problem is often not about the lack of funds, but about the very effectiveness of the system in which discursive customs have been stratified.” On Cinecittà and the Venice Film Festival: “Cinecittà is the beneficiary of a large allocation of PNRR funds and must increasingly become a point of reference for all operators. Cinecittà’s training activity then must integrate with the historic activity of high training offered by the Experimental Center of Cinematography, which we want to further enhance and develop. The Venice International Film Festival, then, represents an absolute excellence in the panorama of international festivals. We want to ensure all necessary support so that this role is maintained and further developed. We must also further strengthen support for film libraries by fostering synergy in their activities.” And finally, on the subject of pop music, Sangiuliano says that “we need to study mechanisms of protection for Italian artists and national independent labels through a congruous presence in radio and television broadcasting, as happens in other European countries.”

What Minister Sangiuliano will do: the programmatic lines of his government

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