The government will discuss a new cultural policy and two amendments for monuments

Prague - The Minister of Culture will present a proposal for the State Cultural Policy for the years 2015 to 2020 and two amendments to the government on Wednesday. The amendment to the Act on State Heritage Care is a technical amendment that regulates the declaration of areas as heritage zones. The amendment to the law on the restitution of unlawfully exported cultural goods responds to a European directive and should help improve the tracking and return of artworks or antiques to their countries of origin.
Approximately halfway through the year, according to the legislative plan, a new heritage law should be presented to the government, a standard that has been awaited for more than 25 years. It is expected that, like several previous proposals, it will provoke significant debate - the law will always seek a compromise between the interests of heritage care experts and owners of heritage sites or developers. A major change, according to the Ministry of Culture, should be the introduction of the possibility to apply for a grant even for a property that is not declared a cultural monument but is located in a heritage area (i.e., a heritage reserve or zone); with rights come obligations, which are similar to those of a heritage site owner.
The currently proposed amendment establishes the form for declaring areas as heritage zones and allows for changes to previously declared heritage zones, the Ministry of Culture states. Existing zones have indeed been declared under various legal regulations, which the amendment should unify.
The amendment to the law on the restitution of unlawfully exported cultural goods will expand the number of objects to which it may apply. Currently, the law considers cultural goods to include cultural monuments, museum collections and collection items, archival materials, and objects of cultural value that meet the conditions for being declared a cultural monument; a cultural good is also part of church inventories. In the future, a cultural good will be an object that is part of the national cultural treasure of a member state without the previous restrictive criteria.
Other changes include extending the time limits for examining cultural goods from two to six months, for filing a lawsuit with the competent court in the member state from one year to three, and for the limitation period for the right to restitution of unlawfully exported cultural goods, if not asserted in court, from one year to three, and for reporting to the European Commission from three years to five.
At the same time, for cooperation among member states in the restitution of unlawfully exported cultural goods, the use of the Internal Market Information System (IMI) for information exchange is being introduced. This already applies to the cooperation of administrative authorities under the law on the free movement of services.