The Wetterling Gallery art gallery in Stockholm will not be required to repay the crisis support paid out by the State Cultural Council during the pandemic, according to a decision by the Stockholm District Court.
According to the Cultural Council, the gallery was to repay 1.5 million kronor since they made a profit, and refers to a terms and conditions appendix stating that an operation making an unjustified profit may be required to repay parts of the support.
"According to the district court, one should instead examine whether the recipient, when applying for support, reasonably could have foreseen that they would make a profit in the future," says lawyer Mikael Ericson in a press release, and believes that more cultural practitioners may avoid repayment claims.
"If one were to review all repayment cases more closely, I believe the Cultural Council would be entitled to repayment in a fraction of these," he says.
The Cultural Council paid out one billion kronor in crisis support to around 3,500 different actors during the pandemic.
Corrected: In an earlier version, a name was misspelled.
