European Parliament approves the Directive on the Restitution of Cultural Goods

In its February session, the European Parliament gave a second reading to the Directive on the Restitution of Cultural Goods and passed it without further amendments. It has now to be adopted by the Council of Ministers to bring automatically into force three days later the Regulation of the Export of Cultural Goods to outside the European Community. The Southern member states are pushing for this to happen straightaway without having thought through the format of the export document required by the Regulation. Unless this export form is well devised, “member states may be unable to put it into practice accurately and with the efficency that the art trade rightly expects”, as Patricia Rawlings, a British Member of the European Parliament, said during the debate. The U.K. government is hoping that the Directive will not be adopted by the Council of Ministers before 5 April, when the next Internal Market Council meets. This should give enough time to devise a workable document.