EU Lawmakers Urge Funding Freeze for Venice Biennale Over Planned Russian Pavilion Return
A bloc of European lawmakers is pressing the European Union to cut off financial support to the Venice Biennale as Russia moves toward mounting its first national pavilion at the exhibition since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
In a letter signed by 37 members of the European Parliament, the signatories argue that EU money should not underwrite an event that includes an official Russian presence while the country remains subject to wide-ranging EU sanctions. The letter, obtained by Politico on Friday, says the EU has provided roughly EUR 2 million (approximately $2.2 million) to the Biennale over a three-year period, though the EU has not publicly disclosed its level of funding.
“Under no circumstances should Russia, a state subject to extensive European Union sanctions on trade, goods and services, be permitted to participate in an event financed by European taxpayers’ money,” the letter states. It adds that “the Russian pavilion must likewise not be used for any activities organised by Russia, whether in physical or digital form.”
The lawmakers frame the issue as a test of institutional coherence: “Every day that Russia’s pavilion remains on the programme of the Venice Biennale is a day the European Union’s credibility is weakened,” the letter continues, arguing that EU support for an institution hosting the pavilion would be “a contradiction in terms.”
Beyond calling the pavilion “unacceptable,” the signatories ask for a formal review of the pavilion’s participants and organizers, with the possibility of sanctions against individuals. The letter also urges “targeted restrictive measures against any individuals or entities involved in the Russian pavilion who can be credibly linked to the Russian government, its propaganda apparatus, or entities supporting the war effort.”
The EU has previously threatened to withdraw funding from the Biennale over the Russian Pavilion. But aside from a brief statement condemning the pavilion, it has not said whether any concrete steps have been taken.
The controversy has drawn criticism from a range of individuals and national governments, even as the pavilion appears to be proceeding. The Biennale has maintained that it cannot remove a nation from the exhibition and has described the event as “a place of dialogue, openness, and artistic freedom.”
That position sits alongside the Biennale’s own recent history. In 2022, after Russia launched its war in Ukraine, the exhibition publicly addressed the conflict and aligned itself with Ukraine, presenting a dedicated Ukrainian project in the Giardini, the park that houses many national pavilions. That same year, Russia’s artists and curators chose to close their pavilion. In 2024, Russia handed over its pavilion to Bolivia.
As debate intensifies, the Biennale has announced two additions to the upcoming edition that appear to acknowledge earlier moments of protest and political rupture in the exhibition’s past.
One project will be dedicated to Carlo Ripa di Meana, a former Biennale president who in 1973 shut down the art exhibition and instead organized a presentation focused on Chile’s military dictatorship. According to current Biennale president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, the new project will involve figures who are “currently unwelcome to their governments, from the US, Israel, China, Russia, and even the EU.”
A second addition, titled “The Column and the Foundation of Truth,” will center on programming related to Pavel Florensky, a Russian Orthodox priest executed by firing squad by the Soviet government in 1937.
For critics of Russia’s return, such gestures do not resolve the central question: whether Europe’s most visible cultural stage can claim political neutrality while accepting public funds and hosting a pavilion tied to a state waging war on a neighboring country. The letter from EU lawmakers signals that, for some in Brussels, the answer should be reflected not in rhetoric but in the Biennale’s balance sheet.
