Brussels \u2013 The European Commission is awaiting a response to the letter it sent to the Venice Biennale, but says it is prepared to terminate the contract. This was reiterated today (7 May) by the European Commission\u2019s spokesperson, Thomas Regnier, during the daily press briefing. <\/p>\n
At the heart of the matter is Russia\u2019s participation in the cultural event: according to Brussels, this could be incompatible with the terms of the funding agreement<\/strong>. \u201cWe have sent an initial letter to the Biennale stating that, in our view, there may be a breach of the \u20ac2 million grant we are providing to support the Biennale,\u201d he explained. “We are now awaiting a reply to our letter, dated 10 April<\/strong>“, and “the Biennale has until Sunday to reply; if the reply is not satisfactory<\/strong>\u2014we have been extremely clear\u2014we will decide whether to suspend or terminate the contract<\/strong>,” he emphasised. “We condemn the Biennale\u2019s decision,” the spokesperson emphasised once again. He also clarified that the Biennale has not yet received any funding and “will not receive it until we have received reassurance.” <\/p>\n A second letter, sent on 30 April, was leaked via the newspaper La Repubblica<\/em>. According to the newspaper, the Commission raised suspicions of a breach of sanctions regulations on two counts. The first concerns funding, because \u201cany costs incurred by Russia for the participation of its delegation benefit the Biennale and appear to constitute indirect provision of financial support\u201d by the Kremlin, which is prohibited. The second point was raised today at the press briefing: the Biennale is providing services to Russia without an explicit exemption from the sanctions rules. The Commission spokesperson, however, declined to comment, stating that \u201cthe letter is not public<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in Venice, the Russian pavilion held a private preview yesterday. The curator, Anastasia Karneeva, thanked the Biennale for \u201ckeeping its doors open to all countries.\u201d Outside, however, there were protests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At its daily press briefing, the Commission reiterated that it had sent a letter to the Biennale on 10 April and that it expected a reply from Venice by Sunday<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7911,"featured_media":452612,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25713,25707],"tags":[25871,33330,26209,34009,34010,25804,25803,33394,31990],"class_list":["post-452639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-world-politics","tag-biennale-di-venezia","tag-biennale-en","tag-briefing","tag-midday","tag-sanctionsin","tag-russia-in-2","tag-ue","tag-venezia-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7911"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":452640,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452639\/revisions\/452640"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}