From the March 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.
The Roman site of Apamea is one of Syria’s archaeological jewels – its 20,000-seat theatre was one of the largest in the ancient world (Fig. 1). But 10 years ago, satellite photographs of the site revealed a shocking development. Before the outbreak of civil war in 2011 the land around it was undisturbed. By 2014, after it had been occupied by antigovernment forces and then retaken by the Assad regime, the site was pockmarked with more than 5,000 pits. According to the American Society of Oriental Research, a non-profit organisation set up in 1900 by universities including Harvard and Yale, this was indisputable evidence of looting.
Around the same time, ISIS forces were making incursions into eastern Syria and north-western Iraq. Reports were rife of cultural destruction, notoriously at Iraq’s Mosul Museum in 2014 and Palmyra in 2015. It was in this fearful – some might say feverish – atmosphere that the European Union decided to act. Shortly after news of Palmyra emerged to the wider world, at the Commission, the European Parliament began to draft what would become the innocuously named Regulation 2019/880 on the import of cultural goods.
One of the chief negotiators, former British MEP Daniel Dalton, recalls: ‘the Commission wanted to deal with concerns about terrorist financing, at a time when ISIS controlled a lot of Syria.’ There was little emphasis on proving that antiquities were indeed making it to the international art market – at which the legislation was targeted – as opposed to being sold secretly. ‘The onus wasn’t on evidence, more demonstrating that a potential loophole was being closed,’ Dalton says.
The draft became law in 2019 and will start to be enforced in June. This may explain why few dealers at TEFAF, the most important fair for historic art, which opens in Maastricht this month, seemed aware of the legislation two years ago. Somewhere along the line it has morphed into the strictest set of rules on the import of art and antiquities in the world.
The law covers a huge range of valuable items from outside the EU, from Chinese porcelain to African masks, Russian icons to early Shaker furniture. It regulates works of art, historical and ethnographic material, even stamps and militaria, as well as natural objects such as rocks, plants and fossils. Anyone bringing these into the EU – art dealers, collectors or museums – will have to prove that they have been legally exported from their country of origin. In the past it was up to the authorities to demonstrate that an item was illicit.
A wooden sarcophagus mask from Egypt dating to c. 1295–1069 BC, which Charles Ede is bringing to TEFAF Maastricht this month, would be more likely to sell in the United States in the future
For a Paris museum buying, for example, an early painting by Gainsborough in London, there will be a lot of extra paperwork. But at least the procedure for getting UK export licences, is well known. For objects of, say, Egyptian origin – which have been traded since the Napoleonic era and may have been made in what is now Sudan – producing a licence dated before 1983, when Egypt banned the export of all antiquities, will prove challenging. If there is no licence, the EU has adopted the UNESCO standard requiring credible evidence that the object was imported from its country of origin before 1972.
Dalton, who is no longer a supporter of the legislation, says that this burden of proof is too high and will damage the European art market. ‘A major problem concerns the need to get licences that document evidence of the legal export of a good from the original place it was created,’ he says. ‘Many countries don’t give these licences at all, and in many cases the original export documents don’t exist. So one of the key demands of the legislation is impossible to comply with.’
Others say that the process will be hugely burdensome even when complete documentation is available. ‘It is an extraordinary act of self-harm for the European art market,’ says Ivan Macquisten, former editor of Antiques Trade Gazette and now a consultant, who has been advising a group of international trade associations and businesses campaigning on the issue for the past eight years.
Macquisten says that the change happened because evidence grew that wherever the excavated Syrian items were going, it was not into the mainstream art market. ‘The law has become more about money laundering, about a desire to regulate the art market, and the financial security of the EU as a whole, which is a much bigger issue beyond art and antiques,’ he says.
Some aspects of the law are uncontroversial. The first section restates existing bans on importing items such as dinosaur fossils from Mongolia. The second section focuses on items considered at the highest risk of looting: artefacts more than 250 years old from archaeological digs or which might have once been part of an ‘artistic or historical monument’, including icons or statues. These must be accompanied by a new EU import licence. Dealers or owners will have to log extensive information about each object on to a customs database and wait, potentially up to five months, for approval, unless the item travels under temporary admission for an exhibition or a fair. The third section covers everything else: paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, decorative art, ethnographic objects, antiquities, books, manuscripts, fossils, flora, fauna and minerals. The regulations apply to objects more than 200 years old and worth at least €18,000. These need the same documentation but, instead of applying for a licence, owners will sign a statement that their goods comply. This is clearly not as tough. But the sting is that the penalty for an incorrect statement is a criminal conviction.
‘Because there are likely to be gaps in the provenance of many objects, it’s highly unlikely that shippers or auction house legal departments will sign off on import statements,’ Macquisten says. This may explain why Christie’s, which is lobbying against the regulation, declined to discuss it for this article – particularly as multi-million euro sales in Asian, African and Oceanic art are currently routed through its headquarters in Paris.
The UK was still a member of the European Union when the regulation passed into law but – to the relief of the London trade – the government repealed it in 2021, apart from in Northern Ireland.
This Flower Pyramid from China (c. 1700), has been sourced by Vanderven Oriental Art from outside the EU, adding to the paperwork required to sell it
The domestic market will still be affected, though, because dealers and auction houses have European clients. Technically, if they sell to a European collector or museum, even at a European fair or auction, it will be the new owner’s responsibility to deal with the import legislation. It is hard to see how this will encourage sales.
Charis Tyndall, a director at ancient art gallery Charles Ede in London, says that the legislation is unnecessary: ‘It was created for false reasons – and even if those reasons existed, this wouldn’t stop it. It’s simply creating barriers to the market,’ she says. It is likely it will change the focus of many dealers away from Europe. ‘We are already considering, when we are acquiring things, if it is something we will take to art fairs in Europe. Because although Europe is important, we have a good domestic market and a huge trade with America,’ she adds. European clients ‘are in disbelief’, she adds. ‘Some of them think I’ve just not understood it, because they cannot believe this could possibly become law.’
‘The legislation is very complicated and burdensome,’ says Joanna van der Lande, senior consultant for antiquities at Bonhams in London. ‘And it’s going to affect private citizens and institutions, not just the market.’
Dealers inside the EU believe that the market will become less international. Marcel Nies, the executive director of Nies Oriental Art in Antwerp, says: ‘The reality in my specialism is that supply is now mostly from old established collections in the West,’ he says. ‘You don’t go to Thailand or Cambodia to buy works of art any more: there are too many problems of authenticity and provenance and prices are very high.’ He adds that in the past 10 years the gallery ‘has sold more to Asia than we have imported’.
As a result, he says, the impact on his business will be limited. ‘But the new law will be a serious obstacle for art fairs – the increasing number of rules is a nightmare for the American and Asian galleries. It is ironic that this is happening just as the EU is admitting that the European economy is being damaged by too many regulations.’
Floris van der Ven, director of Vanderven Oriental art in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, agrees. ‘It is already a challenge bringing objects from New York into Holland,’ he says. ‘Because of the import fees, customs, shipping and now this, an object must be very important and high-value to justify the trouble.’ But, he says, that leaves an enormous set of cultural objects in the middle. ‘The world will just divide in two – the UK, Asia and the Americas on one side, and Europe on the other,’ he says.
A Song-dynasty pottery coin jar that has been acquired by Vanderven Oriental Art within the EU, and is therefore more straightforward to sell
Of course there is an argument that the EU is merely following the direction of travel. A sea change is under way in major international museums, under pressure from scholars, journalists and source countries, which are asking questions about objects they want to acquire as well as works already in their collections.
This began in earnest with the 1998 Washington Conference on Nazi-Confiscated Art. It highlighted the number of works of art in museums and the market with missing or problematic provenances between 1933 and 1945. Some years later, a light was shone on antiquities – since 2013 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has returned major works of art to Cambodia, Nepal, Italy, India and Yemen among others.
The irony about the EU regulations, according to Angelina Giovani, a co-founder of Flynn & Giovani Art Provenance Research in London, is that ‘art market players may be more likely to solve provenance mysteries than museums and academics because there is a financial incentive’. But, she concedes, ‘the biggest trepidation in the market is how to deal with things that were exported a very long time ago, and where the political sphere has changed in [the source] country, which may not be able or willing to provide the information the trade needs.’
Giovani believes that the market will adapt. But an unintended consequence may be to drive trade to the UK or New York. The latter has been ripping up regulations: dropping rules governing auction conduct in 2022 and casting doubt on the risk of money laundering and terrorism financing in the US art market.
The regulations are sure to be a hot topic at this year’s edition of TEFAF. Once the EU rules are implemented they will have consequences for many of the 266 exhibitors. ‘There’s no doubt it’s going to affect us: the British and American picture exhibitors, the galleries in the antiques sections, Asian, Islamic, Indian and of course ancient art dealers,’ says Will Korner, TEFAF’s head of fairs.
TEFAF, a major economic contributor to the city of Maastricht, is lobbying the Dutch government. In France, the Syndicat National des Antiquaires, which represents around 300 antique and art dealers, is doing the same. Some believe that the regulation is so poorly thought out that it may even be possible to get the EU to press pause. Korner admits that he ‘has had moments when I wondered if it was the end of the fair. But I have to put it in perspective. It will be difficult but we have to hope it is just a bump in the road.’
Whether the European art market will be enriched is another matter. ‘It will be a huge loss if what is damaged is what many of us are striving for,’ he says. ‘Which is showing the deep cultural connections between Europe, the Islamic world, the Far East and beyond.’
From the March 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.