New Anti-Looting Law from the EU Has Art Dealers and Gallerists Troubled
On June 28, 2019, the European Union introduced Regulation 2019/880 (the “Regulation”).[1] This new piece of legislation introduces new safeguards to protect the importation of looted ‘cultural goods” into the EU.[2] The law will officially go into effect in late June 2025.[3]
Western countries have long faced scrutiny for their part in the pillaging and looting of precious antiquities under their colonial control.[4] This is why so many of our largest “encyclopedic” cultural institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Museum have faced backlash for the unsavory ways some of their objects have entered their permanent collections.[5] Looting and theft has a long history since ancient times, especially during times of armed conflict.[6] Looting and art theft remains a large issue presently because of the high price tags the cultural object can garner from their sales. Molly Fannon, Director of the Office of International Relations at the Smithsonian Institution noted, “[e]stimates of the size and profitability of black markets in looted, stolen and smuggled works of art and antiquities are notoriously unreliable, but specialists agree that this is one of the world’s biggest illegal enterprises, worth billions of US dollars, which has naturally attracted interest from organized crime as well as military and terrorist groups.”[7] Prevention of looting is crucial because looting leads to the loss cultural heritage and its potential wealth of knowledge that cultural objects and artefacts can provide to archaeologists, art historians, and society.[8]
The EU aims to address this concern with the Regulation. There are several key requirements. Firstly, the Regulation creates a ‘general prohibition rule’ prohibiting the introduction of any illegally exported cultural goods from third countries into the EU.[9] There are then two categories, “high-risk” goods and “low-risk” goods.[10] Cultural goods are designated different risk statuses based on the type of archaeological good, the age of the object, their monetary value, etc.[11] Depending on the classification of risk, importers must provide specific certification and documentation to prove that non-European goods were lawfully exported from their countries of origin.[12] The Regulation also creates a centralized economic database that will be used by customs authorities and different EU member states to track and monitor the importation of cultural goods.[13] This way, authorities can track that all goods have their necessary paperwork and that any discrepancies can be viewed expeditiously and investigated.
This new legislation raises concerns in the European art market. Galleries and dealers worry about increased bureaucracy, delays, and costs.[14] Especially smaller businesses might be ill-equipped to handle the increased administrative tasks to comply with regulations and keep up with necessary paperwork.[15] Others argue that this will unfairly burden art collectors and antiquities dealers specifically located within the EU but have ripple effects with anyone outside of the EU trying to do business or keep their art within the EU.[16] Mark Dodgson, the Secretary General of the British Antique Dealers’ Association (BADA) highlighted the failure of the Regulation to consider that many old cultural goods have exchanged hands numerous times and therefore do not have adequate if any paperwork whatsoever.[17] He argues that the Regulation will have a severe stifling effect because “[i]f left unchanged the regulation reverses the burden of profit assumes that an object left its country of origin illicitly unless it can be proved that it left lawfully.”[18] And this burden of proof will prohibit many lawfully acquired cultural items from being imported due to lack of paperwork.
While the EU law is commendable in its attempt to crack down on the importation of stolen cultural goods, we will have to wait and see what its larger effect will be on the EU antiquities market as well as its trickle-down effects in the global art market.
Footnotes
