The minister announced that he would abolish the Slovenian Film Centre, a public agency set up with a 2010 law as a successor to the Film Fund, in an interview run by the Reporter weekly on Monday after announcing the same measure for the Agency for Books in an interview with the STA last week.

"We see no reason why one artistic discipline would be followed by an agency. Given such reasoning, we'd also need an agency for the performing arts, music, visual arts," Turk told an interview with Reporter.

The minister told the STA last week that abolishing agencies would contribute to reducing the staff. "Founding an agency entails additional hiring. I hear one or two people were in charge of books before the agency was set up, and there are seven or eight employed there now."

Quizzed by Reporter whether he expected a new revolt by culture workers, following the one against the folding of culture into a bigger government department, Turk said that the authors or book publishers could complain if they were affected by lower subsides.

"But if we make a leaner state administration and the same or even more duties are performed by fewer people - or if we give up any of the duties that only consume a lot of time while they mean little to everyone concerned - this should not be a reason for a revolt," Turk told the right-leaning magazine.

However, the minister's announcement already sparked a response from publishers and individuals working with books as well as from film makers. They both expressed surprise and concern over the minister's announcement.

While the supporters of the Public Agency for Books said the problem with the agency was its ambiguous status and called for better regulation of the area of books, film makers said that with the abolishing of the film centre one "branch of art and culture will lose its autonomy".

The minister also agreed with the former head of the Directorate for Cultural Heritage Damjan Prelovšek that the Culture and Media Inspectorate could be scrapped as well because it did not function well.

"It seems that each ministry will only have one inspectorate left and various inspection services with it. This will be also one of the ways to reduce the number of bosses, secretaries and other staff," Turk said.