Italian cultural sector debates need for dedicated COVID-19 recovery fund

Stefano Monti, partner at Monti&Taft, argues against the proposed 'Fondo Cultura' for Italian cultural recovery post-COVID-19, calling it an inadequate tool born from outdated logic. Instead, he advocates for concrete policy actions over a new fund. Monti outlines twelve points for industrial policy, including increasing financial endowments for public entities to grant museum services to private management, mandating e-ticketing and CRM systems in all museums, revising procurement criteria to encourage private investment, defining clear employment types for cultural workers, simplifying below-threshold work assignments while increasing legality checks, creating earmarked capital for administrations to spend only on culture, facilitating equity investments in undercapitalized SMEs via tax credits, awarding existing funds based on percentage increases to favor small organizations, promoting public-private partnerships for cultural area management, establishing publicly controlled private companies to partner with local SMEs for EU funding, offering full tax deductions for cultural investments, and granting full managerial autonomy to autonomous museums. The article was published on Artribune in April 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.