On Thursday 13 July, the European Commission is to present a proposed regulation aiming to facilitate customs controls in order to prevent the trafficking in cultural goods, a practice estimated to be worth between $3 billion and $6 billion a year. The underlying objective is to cut off the financing of terrorism.
According to our information, the proposal brings in the broadest possible common definition of cultural goods to the EU. It will cover all goods (archaeological finds, pieces of monuments, works of art etc.) over 250 years in age.
Two categories have been identified. Firstly, archaeological artefacts (ancient manuscripts, pieces of monuments). For this category, an import licence issued by the member state will be required. For the other category, other types of cultural goods, imports will be subject to strict certification requirements, in other words they will have to be accompanied by a signed declaration stating that the goods were legally exported from the third country.
The customs authorities will furthermore have powers to seize and retain goods if it cannot be proven that the cultural artefacts in question were legally exported. The Commission is therefore introducing a reversal of the burden of proof, in other words the customs authorities will no longer have to prove that the item was imported illegally, an initiative long awaited by EU customs agents.
The Union of Finance Personnel in Europe, which represents customs agents, argues in favour of priority action on customs resources. “Currently, less than 0.1% of imports to the EU are subjected to a documentary or physical check, due to a lack of human control capacity as the result of the unbridled liberalisation of international trade, watering down minimum import declaration requirements”, it explains in its response to the public consultation. Reinforcing human resources and improving initial and ongoing training for customs employees on this subject are two of its priorities.
However, the lobbying over this proposal could well get heated. The ‘British Antique Dealers’ Association’ (BADA) believes the questions in the consultation appear to be predicated on the assumption that “statistically, significant numbers of cultural artefacts have been illegally exported from their country of export and are entering the EU. Yet no material evidence of this has been provided in any documentation associated” with the public consultation. “We wonder how it can be possible to arrive at solutions to a problem when the problem itself has not been identified, analysed and properly understood”. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)