By announcing, on October 17, a savings plan of 100 million euros on the 2025 budget, the president (Horizons) of the regional council took everyone by surprise. Where Michel Barnier's government imposes a drain of 40 million on it in the name of restoring public accounts, Christelle Morançais promised “to go and get some” 60 more next year. “It is an unprecedented, important, demanding effort, but it is an essential and salutary effort”she explained during the budgetary orientation debate.
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As cultural associations are informed of the budget cuts to which they will be subject by the regional council, anger rises 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.
Ditto for the La Folle Journee music festival in Nantes, which must give up its subsidy of 180,000 euros. 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, trembles 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 Pays de la Loire cites reductions of up to 90%. According to cultural actors, who met under the windows of the regional council in Nantes, Monday November 25, live performance alone accounts for 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, Tuesday November 12, which will appease their anger. “So culture would be an untouchable monopoly? »she responds to the criticisms aimed at her, pointing out “very politicized associations which live on public money”. And to wonder, on the same social network: “How sustainable is a system which, to exist, is so dependent on public money? And even more so when this public money no longer exists? A system which we note, in addition, is, despite the subsidies it benefits from, in permanent crisis! »
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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 chosen to entrust the reins of the region to this quasi-novice, now freed from her mentor.
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