Eurostat: Bulgaria, Bulgarians Don't Give 2 Cents about Culture

Society » CULTURE | April 16, 2011, Saturday // 10:55

The Bulgarian state and Bulgarians are at Europe's bottom in terms of their spending for culture, as has been revealed by an Eurostat study.

Bulgaria, together with tiny EU members Cyprus and Malta, is the country that has the smallest amount of cultural products exported, in a ranking topped by Germany and France.

To boot, ordinary Bulgarians, together with Romanians and Turks, are the people with the lowest willingness to spend on culture.

The greatest spenders in this ranking are the Irish and Norwegians.

The Eurostat study also reveals data on the study of arts, pointing out that during the 2007-8 academic year, 3.8% of students in the EU pursued a discipline in the arts.

Here Bulgaria is also lower than the average, with 2.4% of students going in for art academic careers.

Bulgarians are also alarmingly low in terms of cross-cultural contact, measured by travelling abroad, having relatives abroad, and reading or watching materials from another country in their original language.

Only 1% of Bulgarians have answered they enjoy reading foreign books in the original language (EU medium 7%); and only 5% of Bulgarians have travelled at least three times abroad for the last 3 years (EU medium 27%).

In the state budgets for 2010 and 2011, the Bulgarian government made drastic cuts in the funding for culture, and closed down various theaters and concert unions, provoking the ire of large groups of artists and part of the public.

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Tags: culture, art, eurostat, budget cuts

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