The Reform of Italian Law on Cultural Property Export and Its Implications for the “Definitional Debate”: Closing the Gap with the European Union Approach or Cosmetics? Some Systemic Considerations from a Criminal Law Perspective

Abstract

Italy has a long tradition of pervasive regulation of its national cultural heritage, including strict control over the export of cultural objects. In contrast to the lack of a definition of "national treasures" which affects EU law, Italian law has striven to achieve an effective definition of the terms "cultural heritage" and "cultural property", and even more to design specific identification rules for cultural objects. Nonetheless, the issues of definition and related protection on the one hand, and identification on the other, do not always go hand in hand in a legal framework which is made even more complex by the coexistence of two separate models of criminal law protection, as well as by the frequency of reforms, the most GENERAL ARTICLES* Arianna Visconti, Ph.D. in Italian and Comparative Criminal Law, is Assistant Professor of Criminal Law in the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (UCSC) of Milan, Italy, where she also teaches "Law & the Arts" and is appointed lecturer for the School of Specialization in Legal Professions. She is senior member of ASGP ("Federico Stella" Graduate School of Criminal Justice), and coordinates its research groups on offences against cultural heritage and on law and literature. Her publications and studies also cover defamation law, theory of punishment, white-collar and organizational crime, corporate violence.

Between “colonial amnesia” and “victimization biases”: Double standards in Italian cultural heritage law

“…50 On which, seeDemuro 2002;Corsi 2008; Ainis and Fiorillo 2015. 51 Italy has also usually taken an active part in the promotion and negotiation of cultural heritage treaties.53 See Corsi 2008;Lenzerini 2010;Ainis and Fiorillo 2015;Visconti 2019a. …”