The Minister of Culture Nayden Todorov announced two big news on the occasion of the Bulgarian hosting of the UNESCO session next year.
We will propose new Bulgarian sites for UNESCO’s world cultural heritage list, Minister Todorov said during a meeting of the parliamentary committee on culture and media.
He noted that for the 47th session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, which the Bulgarian capital will host next year, a total of about 4,000 guests are expected to arrive in Sofia. 1,700 of them will be the delegates, Todorov pointed out. He recalled that the session will take place from July 6 to 16, 2025.
It is planned to be held mainly in the National Palace of Culture (NDK), the Acting Minister of Culture explained. According to him, it is necessary to renovate Hall 1 in the NDK and the square around the building.
“The idea is, and this is what we are working on at the moment, for the delegates to be taken around important places in Bulgaria, which are our pride and with which we want to change the image of Bulgaria. It is known that in the last 25-30 years, due to a series of objective and subjective factors, cultural heritage in Bulgaria, including the world heritage, is not in a brilliant condition,” said Todorov. Our big idea is to try to save Nessebar, he added.
National Fund “Culture”
For the national fund “Culture”, Nayden Todorov noted that there is a “severe shortage of personnel”. “At the beginning of the year, almost the entire budget was spent on paying for civil contracts, including salaries. After September, there will be no money for salaries in the fund,” he said. According to him, it is necessary to start talks on changing this year’s budget of the fund.
“This year’s and last year’s programs under the indicative program are almost equivalent, including the budget allocated to the fund is almost the same. The difference is 200 and a few thousand BGN, and the budget is a total of nine million BGN,” Todorov pointed out.
He also noted that another problem of the fund is related to the Recovery and Resilience Plan. “As you probably know, the first two sessions that have been released were released incorrectly, with conditions that do not meet the conditions of the European Commission,” said the Acting Minister of Culture. He explained that when these two programs were restarted, more than 150 organizations had already submitted documents. “Part of the people who had applied preliminary, under the primary conditions, filed an appeal. I am firmly convinced that this appeal will not go to court. But it stops the whole procedure. The Recovery and Resilience Plan, as you know, has a limited period. By the end of 2025, everything must have happened and accounted for,” said Nayden Todorov.
The Minister noted that on August 8 of this year, the Ministry of Culture received a letter from the European Commission stating that the new conditions “definitely correspond to the preliminary plan”.
The living arts, cultural heritage and the foreign cultural policy of Bulgaria
The work of the Ministry of Culture is measured in three policies – living arts, cultural heritage and Bulgaria’s foreign cultural policy, said Nayden Todorov.
He pointed out that the country has 11 cultural institutes abroad, which are “too few”.
“In Germany, we have a Bulgarian cultural institute in Berlin, and two people work there. There are three in Budapest, four in Vienna, two in Skopje, one in Warsaw, two in Paris, one in Prague, three in Rome, two in London. A total of 23 people work for the spread of Bulgarian culture around the world. Not even talking about what the budgets are, because they are also ridiculous,” noted the caretaker culture minister.
According to him, there is also a problem in the field of cultural heritage. “The Ministry of Culture has a certain amount of people working for cultural heritage – five of them are responsible for museums and galleries, six of them are responsible for immovable cultural heritage,” he pointed out. According to him, the department not only cannot react, but cannot even learn about situations and problems that have arisen, as they do not have the tools for this.
Nayden Todorov also noted that many foreigners work in the Bulgarian state music ensembles. “In the Vrachan orchestra – it is state-owned – there are 26 foreigners from Azerbaijan, Albania, England, Spain, Italy, Colombia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, USA, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine, Japan. There are only seven foreigners in the Vidin Orchestra – from Romania, Ukraine, Italy, Spain. There are 25 in the Sofia Opera, 41 in the Ruse Opera – from Italy, France, Japan, Brazil, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Sweden. There are 22 in Burgas Opera, again from many countries,” said the minister. He added that in the Staro Zagora Opera their number is 59, in the Plovdiv Opera – 35, and in the Varna Opera – 86.
“Do you know why that is? We don’t have any footage. We don’t have staff because the pay is tragicomic and parents refuse to let their children study music,” said Nayden Todorov, quoted by BTA.
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