Government wants to revise legislation on cultural merit grants

Na hearing in the parliamentary committee on Culture, Communication, Youth and Sport, the minister said that the decision will serve to improve aspects of the decree-law, namely the calculation for the award of the grant and the possible setting of an age limit for beneficiaries.

The Cultural Merit Grant was established in 1982 for artists and authors who showed economic shortages, but did not accept new beneficiaries between 2003 and 2018, the year in which amendments were made to the decree-law, namely with a new scale of echelons and change in the criteria for checking economic condition.

However, Margarida Balseiro Lopes said today that the legislation has never been revised and that the review now announced is the result of an audit of the General Inspectorate of Finance to the Cultural Foment Fund, which identified different criteria for allocating that support.

In June, the newspaper Público reported that the application of new rules by the government on the cultural merit subsidy “will have led to significant cuts in this support, with serious human consequences”.

According to the newspaper, the number of beneficiaries increased from 85 at the end of 2025 to 65 at the time of the news, and the amounts concerned are between 128 and 600 euros per month. The play set the example of a 78-year-old beneficiary who saw his support reduced from 470 to 128 euros and said that others resort to food aid programmes or could no longer afford health care.

Following the report by the Public, the parliamentary benches of the Free, PS and Block of Left, questioned the government about this reduction in the number of beneficiaries, with the minister responding – and repeating at today’s hearing – who merely applied what is in the law.

The minister also revealed that the Cultural Merit Assessment Committee, which has not met since 2022, will meet again in the first week of September, and that it has “at least 22 applications [of grant] since 2022 that have never been examined”.

This committee has a new composition, approved this month by the Government, with the president of the Cultural Foment Fund, Maria de Lurdes Morais Camacho, Pedro Carvalho (Instituto da Segurança Social), Bruno Eiras (Directorate-General of the Book, Archives and Libraries), Susana Costa Pereira (Instituto do Cinema e do Audiovisual) and Amelia Fançony (Directorate-General of Arts).

According to the Ministry, this year the Cultural Foment Fund has 650,000 euros for the allocation of support to 65 beneficiaries and to receive new applications for grants. In 2025, “EUR 340,637.29 were spent” on cultural merit grants to 85 people.

Following the audit of the General Inspection of Finance, Parliament had approved, on 16 July 2025, the hearing of the former Ministers of Culture Pedro Adam and Silva and Graça Fonseca and the former Director-General of the Office of Cultural Strategy, Planning and Evaluation, Maria Fernanda Heitor, on the operation and management of the Cultural Foment Fund.

The hearing, requested by the Aquira, and approved with the votes in favor of PSD and Aquira and the abstention of the PS, the Free and the PCP, has not yet happened.