Alfa English > Leisure

Lights and fireworks will not illuminate Vilnius‘s skyline this New Year‘s eve, which will be far darker than the last. The plan to astonish Lithuanians and tourists with the Festival of Lights on the last night of 2009 has collapsed.

The organization "Vilnius – European Capital of Culture 2009" (VECC) is sinking in debts, daily Lietuvos rytas wrote.

The only consideration left about cultural projects is reimbursing money to the authors, artists, specialists and institutions who organized the events that have already passed.

VECC administration manager Rolandas Kvietkauskas claimed the Festival of Lights was rejected at the beginning of the year when the budget of VECC was reduced.

At the moment, VECC has 800,000 Litas (231,000 euros) debt. The debts are still growing as Vilnius municipality, one of the paymasters of VECC, isn't contributing any money to pay the artists.

R. Kvietkauskas mentioned the possibility of going to the courts, if doubts remain longer.

"We are getting rid of the debts little by little, but it would be great to move forward way faster, as these debts are laying on our shoulders from 2008. It’s possible that Vilnius municipality will not contribute enough money to cover the debts until the end of this year,” Kvietkauskas says.

VECC is also dependent on its other parent organization, the Ministry of Culture.

The ministry is yet to decide whether to contribute any more funding for the performance of "Spragtukas," which was shown on Jan 1 2009 in Vilnius’ Sports Palace.

Vice mayor of Vilnius, responsible for culture, Gintautas Babravicius is even more pessimistic about the debts than the head of VECC.

"We are not going to be able to lift our debts this year. We are moving forward step by step, but we have to reimburse the events of 2008 at first. Only then we can start thinking about this year’s debts,” Babravicius said in Lietuvos Rytas.

The vice mayor hopes that VECC's debts would be covered during the first three quarters of 2010.

"Vilnius municipality will not avoid courts not only for VECC debts, but also for cleaning of streets, other works,” Babravicius claimed.

Vilnius became the European capital of culture together with Austrian city Linz. European Capital of Culture is an EU project, which gives different cities the opportunity to reveal their cultural life and development during one calendar year.