Mitsotakis: Higher state school of performing arts until 2025 – Exemption of artists from ASEP and “fair” public remuneration

Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced the government’s commitment to “public university-level performing arts studies until 2025”, and the legislation for their “fair remuneration” throughout the State, in a post on Facebook.

“We are clarifying the salary landscape for artists so that it is clear to everyone that they are exempt from ASEP and are paid in another way.

Therefore, in order to correct failures and mistakes that have been observed over time in OTAs, we are legislatively extending to municipalities the obligation to use a special and not the uniform payroll, so that our artists are hired and paid in a fair way that recognizes the particularities of the nature of the artistic profession.

This is our Government’s commitment:
1) Public university-level performing arts studies by 2025
2) Direct legislation for fair remuneration of artists throughout the public sector
3) Protection and safeguarding of academic, professional and salary rights of the artists” says the post.

The announcement in detail:

“In our country the following paradox is happening: While we are proud of our great and centuries-long history of theater, dance and music, here in the land of the Muses we do not, never have had, university-level studies in the performing arts. Of course, Greece has high-level state schools, the Drama Schools of the National Theater and the State Theater of Northern Greece, the State Conservatory of Thessaloniki, the State School of Orchestral Art, the School of Dance of the National Opera. It also has historic, high-level, private schools such as the Athens Conservatory, the Drama School of the Karolos Koun Art Theater and many others. However, until today, studies in the performing arts have been disconnected from the rest of the educational system of our country. Of course, there are university departments of Theater and Music Studies, but they have a different direction.

This lack of connection has over the years caused distortions and uncertainty for students, graduates and professionals of the performing arts in terms of their academic and professional rights and are the source of the reactions of many artists on the occasion of the recent Presidential Decree 85/2022 which regulates the qualifications of all of the branches for recruitment to positions of an administrative – and not artistic – nature in the public sector.

We listened carefully to the protests of the artists, we talked, we consulted. And I want to be clear: PD 85/2022 did not cause this timeless pathology, but it brought the issue back into the public debate with intensity. This Government, as it has done in many other matters, will not transfer the problem to the next one. We are determined to provide clear solutions and answers so that our country can acquire a modern educational system in the performing arts.

The Ministry of Culture had already started, in collaboration with our state schools, the necessary preparatory work in 2021. And today we take the next step, fulfilling a decades-old demand:

We are immediately drawing up the road map by which our country will acquire public, university-level studies in the performing arts by 2025. We are also moving forward with the gradation of conservatory education, the backbone of musical education in Greece, as conservatory education in our country is still governed by a Royal Decree of 1957.

We are creating three interministerial Working Groups, one for theater and dramatic art, one for dance and one for music, with the participation, among others, of the Secretaries General of the Ministries of Education and Culture, bodies such as the National Authority of Higher Education, the directors of of our state schools, with the participation of renowned artists from all three forms of performing arts, and of course, in extensive and regular consultation with the representative branch and student unions.

It is the first time that a Government has taken such a step, proving with actions, and not with wishes, our determination to find a solution to a decades-old problem.

Regarding the Presidential Order that has caused concern and upheaval among artists, I would like to assure that the PD does not regulate or change the way artists are hired or paid in the Public Sector for artistic or educational work. The Government undertakes that the PD does not affect the academic, professional and salary rights of the artists, nor does it bring about any change in their legal and financial treatment. But we are taking a step further to end this misunderstanding. We are working on a legislative regulation that expressly excludes the hiring of artists in the public sector from the presidential decree so that there is no doubt that our intentions are to support and upgrade and not to degrade the sector.

For this reason, we are immediately proceeding with one more move: We are clarifying the salary landscape for artists so that it is clear to everyone that they are exempt from ASEP and are paid in another way. Therefore, in order to correct failures and mistakes that have been observed over time in OTAs, we are legislatively extending to municipalities the obligation to use a special and not the uniform payroll, so that our artists are hired and paid in a fair way that recognizes the particularities of the nature of the artistic profession.

This is our Government’s commitment:
1) Public university-level performing arts studies by 2025
2) Direct legislation for fair remuneration of artists throughout the public sector
3) Protection and assurance of artists’ academic, professional and salary rights
It is a complex project that will upgrade and reform our education system and cultural sector. It is a project that starts today and will be completed in the next four years of the governance of the New Democracy.

Read the News today and get the latest news.
Follow Skai.gr on Google News and be the first to know all the news.