Background information

The Dutch government presented a package of emergency measures to support businesses and workers during the COVID-19 crisis. The cultural and creative sector appears especially badly hit by the crisis and this has led to extra measures being taken. On March 27th, the Minister for Education, Culture, and Science sent a letter to the Parliament explaining the need for and content of the planned measures.

Following this first letter on plans to initiate a package of measures, a few weeks later, the announcement was made (after lobbying form the cultural and creative sector), that more support was needed. The Minister for Education, Culture and science announced on April 15th that more financing would be provided to the sector.

Content of measure

In April extra budget (€300 million) has been made available by the government to raise subsidies to the institutions crucial to the sector at national and regional level. A scheme will be developed to provide extra loans to private actors in the cultural and creative sector broadly. The instruments for delivering this extra funding was still under development in April 2020, but the Minister for Culture indicates the government will try to provide funds via the larger national cultural funds. A criterion is that enterprises and private organisations should have made use of other governmental support such as the Tozo.

This extra budget is aimed to help institutes and organisations. Solo self-employed and freelancers are not the main target group of this extra budget, though the rationale is that with this extra financing, institutes can pay and keep their freelancers and solo self-employed for their services and in this way, keep them working.

Use of measure

No information available.

Target groups

Workers	Businesses	Citizens
Does not apply to workers	Sector specific set of companies	Does not apply to citizens

Actors and funding

Actors	Funding
National government Other social actors (e.g. NGOs)	National funds

Social partners

Social partners' role in designing the measure and form of involvement:

	Trade unions	Employers' organisations
Role	Consulted	Consulted
Form	Direct consultation outside a formal body	Direct consultation outside a formal body

Social partners' role in the implementation, monitoring and assessment phase:

• Unknown
• Main level of involvement: Unknown

Involvement

N/A

Views and reactions

As with the Extra package of support measures for the cultural sector, the sector had lobbied for more support from the government, showing that their sector is being especially badly hit. Based on consultation and discussion with organisations form the sector and cultural funds, the government decided to add extra financial support to the existing emergency measures for the cultural and creative sectors.

Sectors and occupations

This case is not occupation-specific.

Sources

• 15 April 2020: Kamerbrief aanvullende ondersteuning culturele en creatieve sector– April 15th 2020 (www.rijksoverheid.nl)
• 15 April 2020: Veelgestelde vragen over coronavirus en cultuur (www.rijksoverheid.nl)