The Minister of Culture says which are the sectors where “it really cannot be cut from salaries”

Employees of public libraries and museums have salaries too low to be reduced, said the Minister of Culture, András Demeter, on Saturday. “They were not the beneficiaries of those small and successive increases from public funds”, explained the minister.

András Demeter was asked, on Saturday, on the Insider Politic show on Prima TV, if Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan asked him to make more cuts at the Ministry of Culture.

“No, obviously, the indications are generally valid, they are for everyone, only that we all agree and the prime minister understood and it was very well documented that, especially in terms of salaries in the field of culture, two areas in particular – public libraries and museums – have salaries that really cannot be cut”, said the Minister of Culture, quoted by News.ro.

He was asked if he could say, approximately, what salaries those employees have.

“Extremely low salaries, because they were not the beneficiaries of those small, small, but somewhat successive increases that were operated on Law 153 of public funding salaries. I don't want to say, because on Culture Day I really don't want to spoil this shadow of celebration…”, stated András Demeter.

Regarding the level of salaries, he admitted that, “unfortunately”, they are in the area of ​​3-4,000 lei.

“We could work in all these institutions and this is a project that I also discussed with the prime minister. We should work on improving the ratio between the subsidy and own revenues. If we go to the definition of public finance law 500, there the notion of subsidy is defined as an amount allocated from public funds to supplement own revenues. In most institutions, the reality is like this. Public revenues represent a percentage that ranges from 5 to the maximum, 20-25% and the majority is the subsidy. So this ratio should somehow be changed”, said the Minister of Culture.