Jelena Medaković: Budget cuts will not affect culture

At the session of the Belgrade City Assembly held on February 27, it was decided to budget rebalancing for the year 2026, 1,3 billion dinars will be taken from culture, so the total budget for culture has been reduced from 7,35 to six billion dinars.

"That's an 18 percent drop," he said Nenad Hadzi Maricic actor and councilor of the Start Change movement after that councilor group left the session.

Photo: Beta

As he pointed out, the money intended for creativity suffered the biggest blow, while the rest of the budget, according to him, comes down to "system maintenance".

According to the Secretariat for Culture of the City of Belgrade, this reduction will not affect the planned program for this year.

Jelena Medaković, secretary for culture of Belgrade, explains to "Vreme" that "the budget was reduced linearly for all secretariats by 2%", and specifies that "the reduction amounts to 93.600.000 dinars, so less than stated by Hadži Maričić".

Also, Medaković says that this reduction "has nothing to do with contemporary creativity or heritage", and emphasizes that "we at the Secretariat managed not to reduce the budget of the institutions".

That's why "the implementation of the adopted program plan will continue unhindered", says Jelena Medaković.