A new EU
proposal on easing the retrieval of stolen cultural treasures and repatriation
to their owner member state is likely to become a severe test of art traffickers’
mettle.
Cultural
goods smugglers have been making money hand over fist over the last decades,
while the current EU directive seems orotund in its content, but rather vapid
in its effectiveness.
The proposal
now waits to be talked over by MPs, and will hopefully see the green light
before a year. It will try to enhance the communication between Member States
and place the burden of proof on the current owners who claim compensation for returning
the object.
It's not necessarily
about whatever gilded object snatched from its owner's hands, but about a
specific list of artifacts protected under the EU directive. It will be up to
every member state to define the kinds of features that each object will have
to exhibit in order to be labeled as national treasure of artistic, historic or
archaeological value.
It has not
taken too much to rouse debate over the issue. From people calling for the
privatization of every public museum, to detractors of the occidental influence
lobbying to give back to the Mediterranean countries the items that they crafted
in the past, but today are exhibited behind northern European museum displays.
Others, on
the flipside, regard such arguments as specious, retorting that museums keep
the relics far from an impecunious future, while acting as a hub so as to be
available for everybody to enjoy their beauty. Other countries don’t have such staid
directives, but rather bivouacs, too flimsy to repel a furtive attack.
While art
traffickers may surrender to stronger European cooperation, the onetime
rarefied atmosphere of art collection and battles for its possession may be
watered down in the media every time they break the news that a country is
struggling to recover some of their cherished cultural belongings.
Declaring that
governments should try to preserve national heritage may sound like hackneyed
palaver, but, not to put an effort into taking care of their historical objects
could be seen as national parsimony instead.
