The Prague City Council has disrupted the continuity of the Czech capital’s support of cultural projects forming a part of public cultural services. If the city’s cultural organisations fail to receive all support, starting with 1 January 2008, the situation is more than likely to widely damage Prague’ own cultural activities as well as further European cultural co-operation and it is also to be noted that the outcome of arbitration proceedings by the European Court could have a bearing on cultural projects established in other European Union member states.
Mr. Milan Richter, Prague Councilman responsible for culture, conservation and tourism has publicly declared that the decision to suspend the city’ cultural grants has been necessitated by the fact that Mr. Petr Kratochvíl who holds U.S. citizenship and co-owns Prague’s Ta Fantastika, a commercially oriented musical and black theatre company has initiated arbitration proceedings at the European Court for the Czech Republic’s failure to protect his investments as his company, unlike some other commercial subjects in the field, was excluded from receiving support from the city’s, i.e. public, funds. As part of his complaint filed with the European Court, Mr. Kratochvíl argued that the City of Prague cultural grant scheme supported subjects above the de minimis rule, which could mean that Prague uses public funds in an unwarranted manner. The core of the argument claims that cultural grants distributed by the Prague City Council from public funds in fact constitute a forbidden restriction of the free market principle and stifle competition. On the other hand it is to be noted that while in 2006 the complainant’s application for a cultural grant failed to win recommendation, his company still received a financial gift from the Prague City Council. This year, the latter has handled applications for two of his musical theatre projects, with one judged positively, the other still undecided as the ruling has been postponed.
The Prague City Council has been awarding cultural grants through an open call system since 1995. According to the current procedure, competition for cultural grants is called at such a time as to collect applications for the upcoming year in August or early September. After strong criticism on the part of cultural organisations, the system was changed in 2005 to have all grant projects evaluated by independent experts included in the grant commission. Since then, the commission was formed by 6 independent experts and 7 city government members ranking from either politicians or employees of the City Council. After a wide public discussions triggered by concerns of the Prague cultural scene that the cultural grant procedures becoming more transparent and rational, Prague’s first document of cultural policy was formulated and officially accepted and a cultural grant scheme with precise criteria and other subject-specific rules was adopted in June 2006.
Notwithstanding, the Prague City Council in its cultural support activities makes also use of a different budgeting mode (called Co-production, formerly Partnership) through which, with no evaluation by external experts, funds continue to be allotted as financial gifts to various subjects, some of whom are even from outside the cultural field. In 2006 when parliament and local government elections were held, the amount of money allotted as gifts was exceptionally high, reaching in fact the double of the usual sum, and city funds were also used to support projects that had not gone through the grant scheme. The practice was strongly criticised by external experts and other noted members of the cultural scene. This year, the media even came with stories on the possible conflict of interest in this respect when an advertising agency received a financial gift and later devised and executed a PR campaign covering Prague Mayor’s climb of the Mount Everest in Himalaya. In June the media circulated stories that the „partnership“ and „co-production“ practices became the focus of an investigation by the anti-corruption squad of the Czech police. In any case, this transparency-lacking mode of receiving support for cultural projects still remains in place and has been used by various subjects including Mr. Kratochvíl’s company.
The political majority in the Prague City Council is held by the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), of whom Mr. Kratochvíl is a well-known supporter of this party, while the co-owner of the Ta Fantastika company is a leading Czech pop star Lucie Bílá who has through public statements and concerts repeatedly voiced her support of the former ODS Chairman, now Czech President Václav Klaus. In fact, Mr. Kratochvíl himself has already started lending support to Mr. Klaus’ media campaign for re-election for which the President will run early next year. Mr. Klaus is a strong advocate of free market policies and sees culture as something of a luxury rather than an economic and social force. It is therefore quite obvious that in a post-Communist society which in many respects has still failed to overcome deeply rooted Marxist theories of culture being a social superstructure, Prague decision-makers continue to see culture as vehicle for their own promotion and representation and a political marketing tool rather than an economic and social asset and service to be used for the dissemination of immanent cultural values.
The biased implementation of cultural policy has a destructive effect on all of Prague’s cultural organisations that depend on the grant support system. Last year alone, some 700 applications from the whole culture sector ranging from professional performing and visual arts to non-professional cultural activities were evaluated through the procedures of grant assessment system.
The strong efforts on the part of the above-mentioned Mr. Milan Richer, Prague City Councilman for Culture, Conservation and Tourism, to shun the valid criteria and rules of the cultural grants scheme as well as his subject-related media appearances waged in an extremely populist manner has rapidly managed to start to swing the public opinion indiscriminately against all culture operators rapidly and to disrupt the already fragile relations cultural organisations and other institutions and their potential donors. The current decisions made on the part of the Prague City Council thus could fundamentally damage many cultural activities and the ongoing Europe-wide cooperation of Prague’ cultural organisations / the ongoing cooperation of Prague’ cultural organisations with their European and other international counterparts.
Finally, it is necessary to note that the Czech Republic has so far lost the majority of its international arbitration cases. If the decision anticipated by the complainant is indeed issued, the outcome could be used as precedent and negatively affect the practice in other European countries as well.
We would be therefore very interested in your opinion, case studies and/or description of practical solutions of similar problems in your particular country.
Please send copies of your communications to us also to: ruo@proculture.cz
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Prague Mayor: Mr. Pavel Bém e-mail: PavelBem@cityofprague.cz and posta@cityofprague.cz