CYIL 2015

398

PETR VÁLEK

CYIL 6 ȍ2015Ȏ

At the next COJUR meeting in December 2013 the Czech Republic and Austria

invited other EU Member States to sign the Declaration. At the 47

meeting of

CAHDI meeting in March 2014 they presented the text of the Declaration to the

Council of Europe members and made the same invitation to them to become

signatories. In addition, although the Declaration is not a treaty, the Council of

Europe Secretariat agreed to serve as a “depositary” for this instrument, i.e. to keep

the signed originals of the Declaration and update the list of its signatories (the

Secretariat made the Declaration available also in French, the other official language

of Council of Europe). In order to fulfill this role, the Council of Europe Secretariat

set up a special website.

As of September 2015 the following States have signed

the Declaration: the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Romania, Latvia, Estonia,

Georgia, Albania, the Netherlands, France, Armenia, Belgium and Belarus. A few

States have responded that they will not join the Declaration, giving different reasons

for their decisions. Germany has taken a critical approach to the UN Convention

at the time of its adoption and vigorously followed this approach also in case of the

Declaration, as its text was based on this Convention. The United Kingdom, while

being supportive to the idea behind the Declaration, has detailed domestic legislation

on the subject that (according to the British view) does not enable this country to

become a signatory of the Declaration. Other countries indicated, however, that

they will be in a position to sign the Declaration soon, once their internal approval

procedure is finished.

4. Evaluating the Czech-Austrian Declaration: Was It Worth the Effort?

At the outset, I have to admit that – as one of the “fathers” of the Declaration

who spent a lot of time working on this project – I may not be perhaps the right

person to write this evaluation. Nevertheless, I believe that this Declaration has been

quite useful for the Czech Republic – and might be useful for other States as well –

for the following reasons:

First, the Declaration is right on the target of promoting “the mobility of State-

owned cultural property” stipulated in its preamble, because it makes the lending

of such property less complicated. Instead of negotiating a guarantee in the form

of a diplomatic note or a letter by a competent minister (which is usually requested

by the Czech institutions responsible for the respective art object), it is much easier

and faster for the Czech Republic just to ask the borrowing country to sign the

Declaration. In 2015 there was a situation when the Declaration substantially

facilitated the organization of an exhibition in one European country.

Second, the Declaration strengthens the rules of international law on State

immunity contained in the UN Convention by confirming their customary law

property.