Bucharest National Theatre complains about underfinancing

The head of the Bucharest National Theatre (TNB), Ion Caramitru, asked prime minister Viorica Dancila and finance minister Eugen Teodorovici to unblock the functioning of the institution that risks being significantly impaired after July 1. Due to underfinancing, TNB will no longer afford to pay the technical staff that supports the operation of the theatre, which delivers up to seven shows at the same time.

TNB has hired the technical staff, some 40 people, from an employment agency and is, therefore, paying a 19% VAT plus a 5% fee to the agency (in principle, TNB is entitled to recover the 19% VAT paid, and anyway it could have hired the people directly).

Both Caramitru and director Radu Afrim told B1.ro that the situation is not affecting only TNB but all theaters in the country, and measures must be taken or the shows will be canceled. Some theaters, financed from the local administration, face even bigger problems since the budgets earmarked from the central administration have been reduced this year.

Typically, local administrations and other public institutions were given supplementary funds on the occasion of the summer budget revision. This year, however, the situation will probably reverse with the central government asking all the institutions to cut expenditures to produce “fiscal room” for the pension increase planned for September.

Meanwhile, actors and other people working in the cultural sector in Bucharest are expected to protest in Victoriei Square on Sunday, June 30, in solidarity with those who have been fired following budget cuts and delayed subsidies from the City Hall of Bucharest. "The situation is particularly disastrous, we all feel it directly: fee payments delayed for months, projects canceled, fewer performances, a total lack of security from any point of view," reads the message posted on the Facebook eventcreated especially for this protest.

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