DEVELOPMENT OF THE RULES OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE, THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE CIS IN THE FIELD OF RETURN OR RESTORATION OF CULTURAL ASSETS

Abstract

The UNESCO Convention is based mainly on the government's philosophy. Therefore, cultural property objects require the state to be "marked" to claim return. This results in most states leaving a private owner without a claim unless the state has "designated" a proper objection, or the state refuses to take action. The political philosophy here strongly supports minimal government action, especially in matters of cultural property, preferring to leave maximum freedom to citizens to organize their own affairs. This means that countries with this political philosophy either did not designate such cultural property objects at all or designated very few of them. This encouraged museums or private citizens who would benefit greatly from it to become members of the UNESCO Convention because they could not see their own convention. The UNIDROIT Convention is largely dependent on the scheme under private law, a private act and reflects this in the definition, as it does not require cultural property to be "designated" by the State for the object to be covered by the Convention.