📋 Tender Overview
From now on the procedure for awarding creative downtime benefits will be much more favorable for artists. The government approved the proposal of the Ministry of Culture to change the provisions of the Social Security Program for Art Creators governing this.The amendments will make it possible not to interrupt the payment of the creative downtime allowance to an artist who is at the same time receiving income or other benefits the total amount of which is less than one minimum monthly salary. The legal regulation in force until now has created an unreasonable and illogical situation where the payment of the allowance for creative downtime had to be terminated after the artist has received any amount of income. For example if a developer had received a royalty of several euros for a previous period during which he was not even in creative downtime the benefit to him would still have to be stopped.Our goal is to prevent developers from suffering from faulty regulation alone. Bureaucratic obstacles must be removed and more favorable conditions must be created for artists in accordance with the principles of logic said Minister of Culture Simonas Kairys.The resolution also establishes the provision that the special regulation of the social security program for artists is applied not only in quarantine but also in an emergency situation. Practice has shown that the activities of cultural institutions and creators have been and may be restricted in the future not only in quarantine but also in the event of a state-level emergency.Creative downtime is the period when a person with the status of an artist of working age due to objective reasons beyond his or her control temporarily does not have the conditions for the creation of art and or the dissemination of its results. Downtime can last for 3 months during which time a benefit of one minimum monthly salary is granted. During the quarantine and state-level emergency the previous provision that a new creative downtime allowance can be granted only one year after the end of the payment of the granted creative downtime allowance has been abandoned.
