I am here to clarify what my salary is and what has happened during this period in which we manage the National Palace of Culture. I took the trouble to print out and bring you my salary slips so that you can see that in the period from my inauguration in February 2024 to September 2025, I received a salary of no more than 3,000 and a few leva. At the end of 2024, I received 2,235 leva - many times less than many employees at the National Palace of Culture. She said this in an interview for the show “Face to Face” on bTV the executive director of the National Palace of Culture Andriyana Tatarova.
“The National Palace of Culture is a huge company. It is a commercial company with the Ministry of Culture as its principal, which is owned by the capital. This commercial company pays taxes like any other commercial company and has a huge building fund that it maintains and is constantly being destroyed. This commercial company has huge expenses that it has to bear. The more we made repairs and maintained the building, the more our salary was reduced”, she continued with her explanation.
According to Ms. Tatarova, this is precisely what necessitated talks with the Agency for Public Enterprises and the principal of the National Palace of Culture - the Ministry of Culture. “The topic was related to what could be changed so that we would be stimulated to maintain this building. The state does not give us a single leva for the maintenance of the building, nor for the salaries, nor for the social security contributions that we pay as a commercial company, nor for the “Buildings” Tax, which is huge. These funds must be collected from the company, this is not budget money. We are not civil servants, as the minister mentioned. We are self-supporting, we do not receive a state budget. Let's see the salaries in budget organizations: theaters and operas. Let's see in the media, which are state-owned. They have estimates of my salary recently. I brought a printout from my bank account and it is 9,700 euros for the management of two companies: Varna and Sofia,” noted the head of the National Palace of Culture.
“No, in recent months I have not taken nearly 14,000 euros. It is alleged that we ourselves determined our salaries and made such a decision. We do not determine anything ourselves: neither the Board of Directors, nor I as the executive director, nor any other board. This is decided by methodology. Be absolutely sure that we have not violated the law”, Andriyana Tatarova, pointing out that her salary has become higher since September 2025.
“For me, this dispute is a matter of politics. For me, the dialogue is much more important to be carried out. To be carried out how much budget organizations in culture receive, to be carried out how much the directors of televisions, the media, which are from the state budget, receive. This is a very important conversation that should be carried out outside the National Palace of Culture. It is very sad that this is happening through the media. In my opinion, there should be an institutional dialogue”, she also commented.
She warned Evtim Miloshev that he is surrounded by “bad advisors”. “He is being misled by people around him. The attack comes from the same people who do not leave his office. These are people who robbed the theaters, at least two of them for sure. These are Ilko Ganev, who was deputy minister, Ms. Mihaylova, who was responsible for the theaters for a long time and is currently returned as an advisor, and Hristo Mutafchiev. They do not leave his office. These people want to rob not only the theaters, as they did. These are very bad advisors. I am not afraid of anything. We are not afraid of inspections, but let the truth come out. The goal is to rob the National Palace of Culture,” Tatarova pointed out.
She also stated that she will not resign because there are no real grounds for this.