By announcing, on October 17, a savings plan of 100 million euros in the 2025 budget, the president (Horizontes) of the regional council took everyone by surprise. While Michel Barnier’s government imposes a drain of 40 million in the name of recovering public accounts, Christelle Morançais promised “to go look for something” 60 more next year. “It is an unprecedented, important, demanding effort, but it is an essential and healthy effort”explained during the debate on the budgetary orientation.
When cultural associations are informed by the regional council of the budget cuts to which they will be subjected, anger grows and spreads behind the scenes. Among the actors affected, the street festival Le Chaînonmissant, which takes place in Laval and Changé (Mayenne), will lose 161,000 euros in 2024.
The same goes for the La Folle Journee music festival in Nantes, which will have to give up its 180,000 euro subsidy. In Angers, the Premiers Plans film festival was cut by 104,500 euros and, in Saint-Florent-le-Vieil (Maine-et-Loire), Julien Gracq’s house, transformed into a writers’ residence, is shaking on its foundations. In 2025, regional aid will be halved and risks disappearing completely in 2026.
“So culture would be an untouchable monopoly? »
The CGT union of visual artists in the Pays de la Loire cites reductions of up to 90%. According to the cultural actors gathered under the windows of the Nantes regional council on Monday, November 25, live entertainment alone represents more than 150,000 jobs in the Pays de la Loire.
And it is not the words of Christelle Morançais on the social network X, on Tuesday, November 12, that will appease his anger. “So culture would be an untouchable monopoly? »responds to the criticism directed at him, pointing out “highly politicized associations that live off public money”. And ask yourself, on the same social network: “To what extent is a system that depends so much on public money to exist sustainable? And even more so when that public money no longer exists? A system that, furthermore, we confirm, despite the subsidies from which it benefits, is in permanent crisis! »
A member of Horizons since February 2024, Sarthoise Christelle Morançais, 49, became president of the Pays de la Loire regional council in 2017, when Vendéen Bruno Retailleau preferred the Senate. The now Minister of the Interior had decided to entrust the reins of the region to this almost rookie, now freed from her mentor.
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