On Monday, the Culture Committee in Gothenburg presented its budget proposal for 2020. The Board needs to make savings of 30 million and several businesses risk closure. Among other things, six of the city's libraries.

The writer's chairman, Grethe Rottböll, and the association's chairman of the Library Council, Madeleine Hjort, criticize the cuts in a debate article in the Gothenburg Post on Friday. They write that Gothenburg's bourgeois alliance follows in the footsteps of Stockholm's bourgeois alliance:

"Instead, politicians choose to build roads, expensive tunnels and refrain from limiting traffic and fossil emissions"

According to the Authors' Association, the cuts risk increasing the class divide. They write that the tax should instead be increased to equip the libraries:

"Increase the qualitative work by investing in literary managers who are responsible for purchasing, programs, calls and accessibility, increase opening hours and work especially in areas where popular education and knowledge, as well as pleasure and imagination are what we citizens need."

Disagreement about the effects of the savings

The Gothenburg Cultural Committee disagrees with the critics that the effects are so great.

- I do not think it is such a big savings, but now we have to bring home the deficit that has existed before. This is part of this, says Ann Catrine Fogelgren (L), alliance politician and chair of the cultural committee in Gothenburg to SVT.

In addition to libraries, cultural activities and summer jobs in the cultural field are at risk of disappearing. The Culture Committee also wishes to withdraw support for the School of Culture and the grant to Film in the West.