11/03/2010

In 2010, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media (Bundesbeauftragter der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, BKM), Bernd Neumann, will have a budget of €1200m, which represents an increase of around 2% compared to the previous year. This means it will not only be possible to continue already existing programmes (including film support fund DFFF), but also implement new ones.

With regard to film, €4m has been earmarked for the digitisation of theatres. For this, it will be necessary to revive the interrupted dialogue between the BKM, FFA (German Film Funding Institute) and the exhibition sector, in order to reach an agreement on the model to be adopted and the timescale to be followed.

Despite the trend towards reduced public spending in Germany, the budgetary committee at the Bundestag (German parliament) has not only ratified the proposal by Angela Merkel’s federal liberal-conservative coalition government, for keeping budgetary funding for culture, but has even increased it slightly.

On hearing of this, Minister Neumann thanked parliament for their decision, particularly in a time of economic crisis, which he believes shows that “culture spending is not about subsidies, but investment in the future”.

(Translated from Spanish)