The Government amended and supplemented, by Emergency Ordinance, two significant normative acts in the field of culture, with a view to eliminate certain institutional blockages and non-unitary interpretations, sometimes even downright contradictory, within cultural public institutions.
The decision was taken urgently because the above-mentioned blockages may have a negative impact on the access to culture and generate material and moral prejudices, the under-funding of the cultural act and lack of efficiency for certain administrative mechanisms in relation to the setting up and funding of cultural projects.
The normative act amends and supplements Government Ordinance no. 51 as of 11 August, 1998 on improving the funding system for cultural programmes, projects and actions, and Government Ordinance no. 21 as of 31 January, 2007 on stage performance and concert institutions, as well as on carrying out artistic managership operations.
The new regulations clarify first of all the conditions for granting daily rates and payments for travelling during the development of cultural projects, so that such daily payments are given also to collaborators and not only to employees of cultural institutions.
Another aspect amended under the emergency ordinance refers to the duration of agreements concluded under copy rights and other related rights, as stated under the Civil Code, so that producers of cultural events may corroborate the duration of such agreements with the duration of the specific programme, project or cultural event or, as applicable, of the season. The measure aims at creating more flexible contracting tools, in agreement with the applicable European practice, a fact made clear lately also by the crisis at the National Opera House of Bucharest. Furthermore, the best contracting form is to be decided by the contracting parties, without imposing any rule in favour of individual labour agreements and any hierarchy as regards the preference for a specific category of contracts. Thus, an institution may develop new partnership projects, festivals and so on, without the obligation to reduce its collaborations only to keep a sufficiently high ratio of individual labour agreements. The new provisions also stipulate that a collaboration does not exclude the maintenance of salary rights, on the condition that the respective collaboration does not affect the employer's activity. It is also stipulated, in agreement with the international practice, the possibility that the participants to projects of exceptional cultural impact, such as gala, tours, festivals, may be remunerated either directly, by the respective project's organiser, or by the sending institution, out of own income obtained. This regulation does not infringe in any way any salary rights and does not generate additional expenses, being a permissive tool with potential application.
The normative act also amends the entry of the expenses related to cultural programmes as regards their budget classification, thus rendering more flexible the planning and budgeting of cultural projects set up by public institutions operating in this field.
Details at:
www.cultura.ro
