A discussion in Parliament Thursday looked into the problems and prospects of the chitalishte community centres in Bulgaria. Bringing together lawmakers, culture figures and chitalishte officials, they discussed funding, administrative capacity, library services, building maintenance and possible legislative changes affecting the country’s approximately 3,600 community centres.
Anton Kutev, chair of Parliament’s Committee on Culture and Media from Progressive Bulgaria, said the meeting was intended to launch a longer-term dialogue. He said the committee had received proposals from community centres across the country and stressed the need for mechanisms to ensure effective oversight of spending on repairs and other activities. Funding should support not only the existence of the centres but also their actual work, he said, adding that ways should be found to encourage the more active ones. He believes there are two questions that are central to the discussion on chitalishte: funding and administrative capacity.
Yuriy Valkovski, chair of the People’s Community Centres Foundation, called for adequate basic funding to guarantee the centres’ survival, rather than support limited to specific activities. He backed a proposed 30% increase in the subsidy standard per funded staff position and suggested introducing a funding standard based on indoor floor space to help address problems with buildings. He also called for the restoration of project funding, a national programme to renovate community-centre buildings and the convening of the National Council for Community Centre Affairs, which he said had not met since 2019. Valkovski further criticised the outdated rules governing the distribution of funds and noted that the registers of community centres and public libraries had been unavailable for more than two years.
Kalina Ivanova, director of the National Library Sts Cyril and Methodius, proposed aligning any amendments to the People’s Community Centres Act with the Public Libraries Act. She called for at least 10% of community-centre funding to be earmarked for library services. She said difficulties with a programme supporting Bulgarian libraries and public reading centres were affecting the regular supply of new books, particularly in the smallest settlements.
Nikolay Doynov, chair of the Union of People’s Community Centres, said community centres were demanding an unconditional 30% increase in state subsidies for 2027. He said the request had been endorsed by 513 community-centre boards and submitted in connection with the draft state budget, warning that without the increase some centres risked closing. Doynov stressed that the adjustment should cover their overall operating costs, including high electricity bills, rather than just wages and social security contributions. He cited January electricity bills of EUR 6,300 at the First Bulgarian Community Centre and EUR 4,800 at the Kiril i Metodiy Community Centre in Sofia, and proposed an intermediate electricity tariff between household and industrial rates. He also pointed to the impact of demographic decline, saying more than 800 village community centres were in settlements with fewer than 50 residents. Doynov called for an expert economic discussion and detailed regional financial calculations, while acknowledging problems with the use of subsidies in some areas.
Milena Nalbantova, chair of the Union of Amateur Arts Organizations, said the increase in the minimum contributory income in the 2026 state budget had raised community centres’ costs while their subsidies had remained unchanged. She said their funding should rise by at least 20%, adding that the organization would support the proposed 30% increase. Nalbantova also pointed to discrepancies in the reported number of community centres, with the Culture Ministry’s non-functioning register listing about 3,800, compared with some 3,400 recorded by the National Statistical Institute. She called for measures to attract younger staff and amendments to the People’s Community Centres Act to clarify membership requirements for establishing centres. She also urged an end to differences in pay between community-centre librarians and their counterparts in regional libraries, whose duties are comparable. Finally, she called for a clear legal framework governing regional expert and consultancy centres for community centres and for realistic oversight of public spending, carried out jointly with the National Association of Municipalities.
MP Chilo Popov of Democratic Bulgaria called for an update to community-centre funding standards to reflect accumulated inflation, which he said had reached nearly 50% over the past five years. He said adequate pay was essential to attracting young people to work at the centres and urged an immediate increase in their operating-cost standards. Popov also called for the Community Centres Programme to be reinstated and expanded to help improve their facilities. He highlighted cases in which community centres had been asked to repay EUR 3,000-4,000 in financial corrections following the purchase of computer equipment under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, sums he said were substantial for centres with limited budgets. He also called for effective oversight of how municipalities distribute subsidies, noting that some chitalishte depended on the goodwill of local authorities and lacked a mechanism guaranteeing timely receipt of their full funding.
Attending were also the Presidential Secretary for Culture, Milena Dimitrova, Deputy Culture Minister Zornitsa Grekova, whose portfolio includes community centres, and more representatives of chitalishte and sector organizations.
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