Tag Archives: parliament

Do statues need protecting? Government set to propose new measures

Posted on: January 18, 2021 by Rebecca Hawkes-Reynolds

Yesterday,  Sunday, 17 January 2021, the Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick announced his plans to introduce new legal protections for historic statues and plaques which will be presented to Parliament imminently. The aim of these new measures is for any change to such monuments to go through a system of approval, whether through listed building consent […]

Macron, restitution and French bureaucracy

Posted on: December 17, 2020 by Alexander Herman

An interesting debate has taken place in France between its two chambers of Parliament: the Senate and the National Assembly. It has arisen in the context of a Bill presented at the National Assembly on 16 July to restitute to the countries of Benin and Senegal a total of 27 items held within French public […]

One step closer for the Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill*

Posted on: February 23, 2017 by Emily Gould

*Update: On the day of going to press, we later discovered that, with impressive speed and efficiency, the Bill received Royal Assent, so look out for further posts on the Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Act 2017! As of this Monday (20 February) the UK is now one step closer to ratifying the 1954 Hague Convention […]

Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill scrutinised by Lords at Committee Stage

Posted on: July 4, 2016 by Emily Gould

It was heartening to see the strong support for the Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill 2016 when it was debated at the Committee Stage in the House of Lords last week (28 June). The Lords discussed at length, and with some passion, the amendments tabled by a number of peers. The proposals for changes came […]

Proposed law in Scotland could affect museum objects

Posted on: September 25, 2015 by Ruth Redmond-Cooper

A change to the law in Scotland could have an impact on objects left at museums, where the owner has disappeared or has become untraceable. The draft bill before the Scottish Parliament would first seek to introduce a 20 year positive prescription period, whereby a possessor of corporeal movable property (i.e. an object like a painting) would […]

European Parliament Votes on Cultural Heritage Initiative

Posted on: September 10, 2015 by Ana Laura Blanco

This week the European Parliament debated and adopted a report on the future of cultural heritage in Europe. The report highlighted the economic importance of cultural heritage and pointed the way towards further European legislation in this field. In May 2014, EU Culture Ministers called for the “mainstreaming of cultural heritage in national and European policies” and “the development of […]

Cultural heritage report to be considered by European Parliament

Posted on: September 1, 2015 by Ruth Redmond-Cooper

It has been brought to our attention that during the next plenary session of the European Parliament (7-8 September 2015), there will be a presentation and vote on the own-initiative report ‘Towards an integrated approach to cultural heritage for Europe‘ led by the Committee on Culture and Education. We will be providing an overview and […]

Update on Freedom of Panorama

Posted on: July 10, 2015 by Alexander Herman

Just a quick update to say that yesterday the European Parliament voted – overwhelmingly – to remove the proposed restrictions on Freedom of Panorama (FOP) from the report currently being debated. The proposal had been outlined in two earlier blogs: here and here. That means the status quo will be maintained: countries such as the UK, […]

Last call for ‘Freedom of Panorama’

Posted on: July 8, 2015 by Alexander Herman

As the European Parliament is set to vote tomorrow on the amended Report dealing with the harmonisation of ‘Freedom of Panorama’ across Europe, the opposition to the Report has taken off. This can be seen in the nearly 500,000 digital signatures acquired in the last week alone protesting the current provisions of the Report: notably the […]

UK Parliamentary motion for the Marbles’ return

Posted on: March 10, 2015 by Alexander Herman

Yesterday, an ‘early day motion‘ was presented before the UK Parliament by MP Andrew George calling on Britain to engage in a ‘gracious act’ and reunite the sculptures at the British Museum (aka the Elgin Marbles) with those kept in Athens’s purpose-built Acropolis Museum, ‘in the shadow of the monument to which they belong’. More specifically, the motion calls […]