Misguided policy

Vincent Geerling | 24th January 2022 | Uncategorised

Guggenheim Museum and waterfront skyline

Poor data and fake news are damaging the international arts industry

Legislation to regulate the art market is misguided and based on inadequate data and fake news. This damages and obstructs a valuable sector of the economy. It might also undermine the individual rights of the citizen to private property. One example is the EU Regulation 2019/880 covering impact of cultural goods. The European Commission’s own report 'Illicit trade in cultural goods in Europe' published in 2019, shortly after the regulation was rushed through the EP, failed in its primary objective of measuring the size, scope and nature of illicit trade in cultural goods because of a lack of reliable data. But this report flagged up serious concerns about the data available for the policymakers drafting this legislation. Two of the authors of that report, Neil Brodie and Donna Yates, describe those concerns in an academic paper published in November 2021 – Why There is Still an Illicit Trade in Cultural Objects and What We Can Do About It. They state that there was a “dearth of trustw...

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