The Education and Culture Ministry of Republika Srpska (RS), the country’s Serb-majority region, has strongly condemned the decision of the central government to partly finance the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, saying that is illegal since culture is the competency of the regional governments and the cantons and not the state.

The Council of Ministers, which is how the Bosnian government is called, decided it will cover the museum’s heating bills by putting it on the list of state institutions it pays for heating for.

This, the RS Ministry said, represents “a continuation of the anti-constitutional favouring of cultural institutions which territorially and administratively belong to the Federation (FBiH),” the other semi-autonomous entity in the country.

The decision is another attempt to transfer competencies in the culture sector to the central government, the RS Ministry said.