<span>Kultura má dostat méně než letos, jedno procento se vzdaluje</span> translates to <span>The culture is set to receive less than this year, one percent is dwindling</span>

Prague - The Ministry of Culture is among those departments and state offices that will have a lower budget next year than this year. Although it is a reduction of nearly seven percent, the share that the Ministry of Culture has in the state budget will again decline after two years. The one percent promised by several governments from the budget is still nowhere in sight. The cabinet of Mirek Topolánek aimed to reach this amount, typical in European countries, by 2010, at the end of its current mandate.
    The Ministry of Culture does not want to comment on the draft budget for next year until it goes through the government. It only stated that the budget will likely be of a similar amount as this year. This year, the ministry managed with a budget of 8.8 billion crowns, which was almost a billion more than last year. Next year, it should be approximately 8.3 billion crowns.
    However, the largest year-on-year increase was in the budget of the ministry in 2007, when it rose from 6.4 billion to 7.9 billion crowns compared to the previous year. The budget was prepared by the then-social democratic government, which resigned in August 2006.
    And while the Prime Minister recently praised Minister Václav Jehlička (KDU-ČSL) for the fact that last year and this year the share of the Ministry of Culture in the state budget is almost 0.8 percent, next year it is expected to be 0.72 percent. The Prime Minister stated two weeks ago that the share of culture in the state budget should not "significantly decrease" next year either.
    According to Topolánek, the amount around 0.72 percent of the state budget is "significantly more" than during the previous governments, when this share was around 0.6 percent. This was the case between 2001 and 2006, but in the years 1999 and 2000, for example, this share was 0.88 and 0.85 percent, respectively.
    One percent for culture, which is common not only in Western Europe but also in many post-communist countries, is considered by cultural managers to be a necessity - if the state recognizes the values that culture brings. They also remind that culture is not a sector that merely consumes money, but also generates it, among other things because many services are associated with it.