Donald Tusk’s government wants to allocate hundreds of millions of zlotys for subsidies for low-income artists, and the proposal has already sparked a political storm. The Confederation party has announced a motion of no confidence against Culture Minister Marta Cienkowska, while Krzysztof Bosak openly spoke of a “cascade of absurdities,” “throwing money around,” and financing “nonsense” with taxpayers’ money. The Confederation leader also did not hide his outrage over the way public funds are being spent by the Ministry of Culture.
On Tuesday, the government adopted a draft law on the social security system for people working in artistic professions. The proposal concerns, among other things, subsidies for creators with “low incomes.”
“Today, during the government meeting, we also have an issue that tens of thousands of people in Poland have been waiting for for a long time, and it is also connected in some way to today’s holiday (Mother’s Day). I am talking here about a law that will include professional artists in the social security system […] this especially concerns young female artists and young male artists who are struggling for various reasons. The greatest and most famous artists throughout centuries — you remember, you know these stories — very often suffered poverty for many, many years. People did not always realize they were talented and, speaking very seriously, this had very unpleasant consequences. For example, some of these young female artists cannot, and to this day still cannot, benefit even from maternity leave,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk argued while presenting the project.
Confederation Collects Signatures. Will Cienkowska Be Dismissed?
On Wednesday, Krzysztof Bosak, one of the leaders of the Confederation party, announced that his grouping was “beginning to collect parliamentary signatures for a motion of no confidence against Culture Minister Marta Cienkowska.”
In his view, “the project involving subsidies for artists’ social security contributions is the disgraceful culmination of Minister Cienkowska’s entire disgraceful ministerial career.”
Bosak: A Cascade of Absurdities
Asked on Polsat News about the signature campaign, the Confederation leader recalled:
“Recently we managed to convince other parliamentary clubs. I hope it will be the same in this case, because what Ms. Cienkowska is proposing, and the way she runs this ministry, is simply some kind of cascade of absurdities — throwing money at things that are unnecessary at the moment, helping to privilege artists at the expense of the rest of society. We do not even know whether these will actually be artists…”
“I have zero — or even negative — trust that they will actually select people who create something with artistic value, setting aside the question of whether granting anyone privileged pension treatment makes any sense,” he said.
The project prepared by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage aims to include artists in the social insurance system in a manner appropriate to the nature of their work. The regulations are primarily social in character — their main beneficiaries are supposed to be artists with the lowest and most irregular incomes. The law is expected to cost the state budget 300 million zlotys.
“And now, if this money is supposed to go to people to whom they hand out, for example, 130,000 zlotys for a cardboard exhibition in parliament that almost nobody sees because MPs are not interested, or if they give it to individuals like the famous Jaś Kapela, who recorded some graphomaniac songs about abortion and now they call it art — right? I do not trust them,” Bosak said.
As he added, “they spend money on some nonsense, bent sheets of metal that they call sculpture.”
“We cannot give these people any additional money to manage because they are extremely wasteful and extremely irresponsible,” he stressed.