This March, European art dealers are holding a public campaign against the EU’s new art import regulations. In late February, the Parisian art dealer association Syndicat National des Antiquaires (SNA) warned that the regulation would have a detrimental impact on the art market and the collectors in the EU’s 27 states would be unfairly penalized. A few days earlier, similar criticisms were raised during a panel discussion at the art fair TEFAF Maastricht, which ended on March 14.

According to EU legislation enacted in 2019, the new rules, which will come into force on June 28, 2025, will prohibit the importation of cultural goods illegally exported from non-European countries into the EU and will impose an obligation on both existing owners and new importers of antiquities, including artifacts, monuments, and artworks, to prove their eligibility for importation, meaning that either the importer or the owner will have to provide proof of ownership or provenance.

All imports that fail to pass the verification process will be considered looted. This legislation includes pre-Columbian tribal artifacts, and artifacts from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, and the impact of this legislation on the antiques market is supposed to be significant. In particular, the French art market is likely to be strongly affected, as it has emerged as a central player in the European art market since Brexit.

The backlash from the art world has been fierce. Critics argue that while the idea is good in theory, realistically it is impossible to prove ownership of exports that took place centuries ago and that it is unfair to require re-verification by modern standards for transactions that took place legally in the past. While the EU argues that the legislation will prevent the proceeds of the illicit trade from funding terrorist activities, opponents argue that there is no evidence that the proceeds of looted art have been used to fund terrorism and that the scale of the illicit antiquities trade has been exaggerated by the media.