Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes President Defends Budget Cuts in Culture Amid Criticism

The president of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Laurent Wauquiez (LR), criticized for budget cuts in culture, defends his choices of a territorial “rebalancing” and attacks the minister who according to him “would do better to get out between oneself and Parisianism”, in the JDD.

The cultural policy of the former president of the Republicans has been denounced in recent weeks by the cultural and political world. “What crime have I committed that would be worth cultural excommunication? “Wauquiez is indignant in this interview, recalling that when he took the Region to the left at the end of 2015, the culture budget was 59 million euros, against 77 million today.

“A dangerous drift”

Through the critics, the right-wing elected sees “a dangerous drift in our cultural policy”: “The Ministry of Culture has become a counter, a machine for running the subsidies that a small handful of people consider as their due “.

“The majority of the Ministry of Culture’s credits are reserved for Paris, the Île-de-France Region and a few metropolises” and “there are cultural deserts in our country just as there are medical deserts”, estimates- he also mentions “a two-speed culture”.

Thus, “I want to pay the same attention to the Lyon theatre, which is lucky enough to benefit from hundreds of thousands of euros in State funding, as to the Oyonnax theatre, which is completely forgotten by the Minister of Culture”, explains the President of the Region, defending himself from disfavoring cities in the hands of his political adversaries.

“The Minister of Culture must explain herself on this subject instead of dodging. I ask him to be transparent about the distribution by territory of the ministry’s credits, ”continues Laurent Wauquiez. Rima Abdul Malak “would do better to get out of self-segregation and Parisianism”, he judges, considering that “we are hard pressed to say what his cultural policy is”.

Tense debate

The minister was worried about the choices of Laurent Wauquiez. “We see where his priorities are,” she said recently in reference to the major projects he is carrying out – Museum of Fabrics, “House of the Little Prince” in the birthplace of the writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, tourist site dedicated to Gallic civilization on the Gergovie plateau.

“Laurent Wauquiez, why did you decide to make culture your enemy? Besides, it doesn’t look like you, your background, you’re a very cultured person, you weren’t like that before. What is happening? “, she asked again on Saturday evening on France 2.