Romania

Last update: April, 2020

The concern for the preservation and valorisation of cultural heritage has an historical tradition in Romania, which has been allowing the strengthening of a dedicated administrative and legal system at present. All the cultural heritage fields are in focus: the moveable and immoveable heritage, the archaeological, industrial and intangible heritage, as well as the cultural landscape.

The central authority in the field of culture is the Ministry of Culture, which provides methodological coordination, monitoring and control over all specialised and non-specialised heritage owners, via its specialised department – the Directorate for Cultural Heritage (with services dedicated to the immoveable and archaeological heritage, as well as to the moveable and intangible heritage), and through the county and Bucharest culture directorates (decentralized services organized at the level of each territorial-administrative unit), and other subordinated institutions, such as the National Heritage Institute. There are also commissions that support the decisions of the Ministry of Culture, which have an advisory and / or endorsing role: the National Commission for Historical Monuments, the Zonal Commissions of Historical Monuments, the National Commission of Museums and Collections, the National Commission for Archaeology and the National Commission for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. 

Cultural heritage has always been an important part of the cultural strategies, actions and politics in Romania. Even though at present we cannot speak about officially assumed and coherently implemented sectoral strategies, cultural heritage is distinctly highlighted within a general objective of the Strategy for culture and national heritage 2016-2022: A better protection of the cultural heritage, based on the acknowledgement of the situation and engaging in efficient partnerships (local-central and public private), subsumed to the priority axis 1, Culture-Factor of sustainable development. 

The specific objectives included in the Strategy for culture and national heritage 2016-2022 are: 

With the purpose of protecting historical monuments:

• Research, information and documenting on the situation of historical monuments through an integrated approach at local and regional level.
• Improvement and extension of public access to historical monuments and promotion of knowledge on these monuments via new technologies.
• Development of integrated programmes of scientific research, documentation, rehabilitation, management and usage of historical monuments prone to generate welfare and economic development, also through their inclusion into the travel circuit.  
• Support for the cohesive values of historical monuments, as factors of social inclusion, of aggregation of social groups around them, considered as cultural and identity landmarks.
• Promotion of cultural diversity by preserving and promoting historical monuments representative for ethnic groups and minorities in Romania. 
• Priority support for category A heritage monuments rehabilitation, at central level and for category B monuments, at local and regional level. 
• Set up and management of Regional Restoration programmes.
• Improvement of the physical state of the historical monuments currently in a state of structural (pre)collapse. 
• Protection and valorisation of the protected built areas. 

With the purpose to protect moveable heritage:

• Consistent implementation of the legislation on the ex officio classification of the moveable cultural assets, including those belonging to private owners (e.g. cults) and monitoring the provisions related to incidents in the field.
• Inventorying and keeping records on the stored goods with a view to their conservation, restoration and valorisation. 
• Support for a plan of reorganising storage spaces for moveable heritage, as well as for the set-up of declassification criteria.  
• Enriching the national cultural heritage via research, acquisition and recovery of stolen or illegally exported goods.
• Putting an end to spoliations (thefts, unauthorized research, illegal exports, destructions etc.) and setting up an adequate protection and security system, including the activation of intra-community and cross-border cooperation instruments.
• Promotion of knowledge on moveable heritage via new technologies and support for focused campaigns of awareness and appreciation, and for valorisation of the moveable national cultural heritage assets. 
• Promotion of knowledge on the moveable heritage through scientific methods, systematized database of current and future knowledge.
• Support for and promotion of public access to and participation in moveable heritage.
• Support for the development of Romania's art market for (classified and non-classified) cultural goods, as well as for contemporary creation.
• Regulation and support for professional training in specific professions and occupations and increasing specialists' competitiveness on the single market.
• Support for the activities of conservation and restoration of the classified moveable cultural goods. 
• Support for the establishment of Regional Centres for the Conservation and Restoration of the Moveable National Cultural Heritage.   
• Appraisal of moveable cultural goods with a view to maximise their value. 
• Ensure implementing of the Hague Protocol for the Protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict.

And with the purpose of safeguarding, protecting and valorising the intangible cultural heritage:

• Close monitoring of the protection degree for cultural goods listed in or proposed for the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage
• Closing the processes related to the repertoire and inventory of Romania's intangible cultural heritage.
• Adjustment of the national programme for the safeguarding, protection and valorisation of the intangible cultural heritage to the realities of a fast-changing society, especially in terms of preservation of traditions. 
• Drafting of an inter-sectoral program for the creation and development of entrepreneurial skills, of business models adjusted for the economic development of communities, for the stability of working population in the field of crafts, for the decreased percentage of impoverished and nearly-impoverished rural population.
• Promotion of cultural diversity and intangible heritage elements through the preservation, development and expression of cultural and linguistic identity of minorities and ethnic groups in Romania, as well as within Romanian communities abroad. 

In order to realise these goals, an important role is played by the systematisation and encoding of the legislation in the cultural heritage field – an initiative materialised in 2016, after long-lasting efforts, through the approval of the Cultural Heritage Theses, which is now part of a project financed from European funds. Thus, in the period July 2018-September 2021, the Ministry of Culture, in partnership with the National Heritage Institute, develops the project "Historical Monuments – strategic planning and optimized public policies", whose general objective is to optimize and stream the administrative, legislative and decisional act within the central administration and its decentralised services in the field of national cultural heritage. The specific objectives: "Systematisation and simplification of the active legal fund" and the "Drafting of the strategic and operational framework to achieve policies based on evidence in the field of immoveable heritage" are materialised through the following activities:

• Inventory and analysis of the legislation in the field of cultural heritage;
• Systematisation of legislation and drafting the Cultural Heritage Code project, accomplishing the process of public consultation; endorsement and approval of the legislative project;
• Ex-ante evaluation of the impact of evidence-based policies and integration of conclusions into the National Strategy on the protection of historical monuments;
• Drafting of the National Strategy on the protection of historical monuments. 

The correlation between the processes of legislation encoding and of drafting the National Strategy on the protection of historical monuments is an advantage of this undertaking, allowing for the establishment of implementation mechanisms starting from the regulatory level.

Another development direction of great specificity, including the field of cultural heritage, is digitisation – a process that was boosted by the strategic initiatives at EU level. Since 2007-2008 Romania has benefited from a public policy on the digitisation of its national cultural resources and on the creation of Romania's Digital Library. Implementing this public policy has had an impact up to the present, and its results are based on a project of the Ministry of Culture, "E-Cultura", which is developing in the period July 2018 – July 2021 and whose specific objectives are: "Increasing the number of digitised and online-displayed elements of cultural heritage, in a single access point", "Increasing the degree of inter-operability between the institutions that own cultural heritage elements" and "Promoting the national cultural heritage by displaying the digitized cultural  resources on europeana.eu". The project involves the digitisation of 550 000 resources and their display in Romania's Digital Library, as well as the creation of a platform – culturalia.ro. This project is also aimed to improve Romania's contribution to the europeana.ro platform.

Apart from the inherent deficiencies in implementing the heritage protection and administration mechanisms, we must emphasize that Romania is connected to all major directions of heritage protection proposed by UNESCO, EU, COE, ICOM, at international level. The accession/ratification and signing of all the international conventions relevant for the field of cultural heritage guarantee the highest principles of protection, while the constant fostering of proposals of elements for the UNESCO's Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and World Heritage List is aimed at international recognition of Romanian values and their integration in the global protection systems.

Last update: April, 2020

Law no. 334/2003 – the Law on Libraries – is the primary legal act that regulates the establishment, organisation and functioning of the public libraries and of those private libraries carrying out activities that are specific to public libraries and which together form the national library system. This system is a part of the national information system, which aims at ensuring a unified performance of library activities and to stimulate public reading. The national system of libraries includes the National Library of Romania, the Romanian Academy Library, university libraries, specialised libraries, public libraries and school libraries.

Amongst the specialised staff, which consists of librarians, bibliographers, researchers, editors, documentarists, conservators, system engineers, programmers, operators, analysts, custodians, handlers, store managers and other staff, there are no professionals to handle tasks such as public relations, liaison with the community or education (which requires school teaching or adult education skills).

An important provision (paragraph 8 of Article 70) related to solving the chronic lack of premises, specific facilities and equipment: namely stimulating private sponsors to invest in construction of library buildings; to purchase specific facilities, information technology devices and documentation; stimulation of private investments in funding programmes for ongoing training of librarians, expert exchanges, professional development scholarships and attending international congresses. In exchange for such investments, the investors would have been allowed tax incentives proportionate to the worth of the project or of the initiative funded, plus a 2% reduction of their income tax.  Unfortunately, Law 334/2003 was repealed following the enactment of the 2003 Fiscal Code.

A provision of the Law no. 186/2003 on print culture items considered setting up a fund for the acquisition of publications (in the “print culture” category) for public libraries and for the granting of vouchers used to purchase such publications by public library users: pupils, students, people with an monthly income of less than the minimum national monthly wage, and impaired people. The fund was to be constituted from the 0.4% share of the net profit of the National Lottery Company SA and managed by the Ministry of Culture. In 2012, the provision regarding the granting of such vouchers (article 23 of the Law) was repealed.

Romania has aligned to the proposal of library digitisation launched by the European Commission as early as 1999 with a view to informational development, within successive initiatives (e-Europe, e-Europe 2005, the i2010 initiative) that promote economic growth and increasing employment rate in the information society and media industries.

Archive activity is regulated by the National Archives Law No. 16/1996, republished, which establishes the regulatory framework governing the organisation, functioning and the responsibilities of the National Archives as an institution with a methodological and control role in relation to all creators and owners of archives. The law also defines the National Archives Fund of Romania, comprising documents created over time by state bodies, public or private economic, social, cultural, military and religious organisations, by freelancers, professionals working under a special law and individuals, who benefit from special protection. Although the National Archives Directorate does not belong, from an administrative viewpoint, to the system of public cultural institutions, by its very activity this institution participates, along with libraries and museums, in the preservation and safeguarding of the cultural and historic resources, thereby falling under the category of institutions engaged in cultural and artistic activities. However, due to failure to include this type of activity amongst the creative and cultural ones, this very important sector cannot be monitored or reported across the cultural sectors, which is why the performance indicators for Romania show lower values compared to the other EU Member States (Eurostat).

Table. Economic performance – Archives and libraries 

Source: Borg Design Database, INCFC analyses

Despite a slight positive trend recorded in the period under review, this sector ranks among the last in line in terms of economic performance. However, it is important to note that the performance indicators in the table above refer to the business conducted by private organisations, with the largest share represented by archive companies. Given the predominant preservation function of this sector and the very large share of public organisations, we believe that, in this case, the importance of this sector resides mostly in its social and community roles support and some clearer regulations are absolutely necessary.

Last update: April, 2020

In the public sector, the establishment, organisation and functioning of the entities engaged in performing arts are regulated by the GO No. 21/2007 regarding performing arts, concert institutions and artistic managers' activities. The regulatory framework was improved in 2016 by the provisions in the Ordinance 48/2016 amending some legal provisions in the field of culture, applicable, inter alia, to public performing arts institutions and concerts. 

The functioning and organisation of this type of institutions and their specific activity would require some clearer regulations, but, in the absence of an applied study, the malfunctions reported by authorities and even by the relevant institutions in the field cannot be addressed yet. There is also an issue related to the statistical identification of these public or private performing arts entities, as some of the local public institutions are cultural centres with extremely diverse activities, which report performing arts activities, but are not strictly registered as this kind of institutions. This is why the differences between the number of units with performing arts activities and those registered as performing arts or concert institutions/organisations are quite high, at national level. 

Although they are important sectors of a high economic impact, the music and entertainment sectors in Romania are not covered by any specific regulations. Depending on how they are organised, they may fall under the incidence of the Law no. 31/1990 – Law on companies, republished, of the relevant provisions of the Civil Code, of the Ordinance on associations and foundations (GO no. 26/2000) or under the incidence of the GEO No. 44/2008 on the activities of freelancers, individual and family enterprises, as amended and supplemented.

Table. Economic performance – Performing arts 

Source: Borg Design Database, INCFC analyses

The above table illustrates the performance of the private (profit and non-profit) businesses in this sector. By the very nature of the products it develops, the performing arts sector involves large ensembles of creators of various categories and therefore it requires rather complicated technical facilities to produce performances, which explains why very few active companies in this field are able to survive without consistent support. Although this sector is the least capable to survive in the absence of public intervention, its emergence on the market, mainly in cities, is an acknowledgment of the fact that public institutions cannot possibly satisfy all of the expectations of the general public.

Last update: April, 2020

In the visual arts field, the biggest problem encountered is linked to the fragility of the domestic art market, which is due to the low appetite of consumers for visual arts, as revealed by the 2015 Cultural Consumption Barometer. The total lack of specific tax and financial measures taking into account the characteristics of this domain perpetuates its vulnerabilities, with a direct impact on the incomes earned both by contemporary visual artists and by the specialised businesses (art galleries, auction houses etc.). The status, the nature and the specificity of the visual arts trades are approaches difficult to apply in the case of some public institutions. On the other hand, the state cannot interfere with the building of an art market. However, a quite significant number of Romanian artists are successfully harnessing their artistic works, thereby contributing to the economic growth of the country. 

Table. Economic performance – Visual arts

Source: Borg Design Database, INCFC analyses

Although the appetite of the general public for contemporary visual arts in general is very low, some forms of visual arts (design or photography) show a high performance trend in the analysed period, along with the related sales transactions. Besides, even though the number of artistic works sold is small, their economic value is, in some cases, much higher than that of other cultural products.