Back in March I posted here a series of blog posts concerning  proposed EU regulations for the importation of “cultural goods.”  The official objective of these regulations was to combat the looting and destruction of important cultural sites  and to prevent the financing of  terrorism through the trafficking of stolen cultural goods and artefacts.  Early books and manuscripts were included among the objects that were targeted by these new rules even though no one I have heard from has yet seen evidence of terrorist finance activity in the rare book market.  

Needless to say, there was a great deal of concern in the antiquarian book market once the details of the proposed regulations became known and understood.   The alarm, however, was somewhat relieved by the fact that the next stage in the process would allow for amendments to the initial proposal and that there was acknowledgement among at least some of the people involved that major changes needed to be made.

Well, changes are, indeed, afoot, but whether they improve or worsen the situation probably depends on the age and value of the objects you are interested in and whether they are most often books or manuscripts. For booklovers the extent of the burdens may, indeed, be a bit reduced.  But for those who collect early manuscripts (and in some cases not so early) it looks like things will become even worse than originally proposed.

The deadline for making amendments has now passed.  There are at least 381 of them, and I must confess to having skipped over a few. From our perspective, however, the most crucial amendments relate to the ANNEX at the end of the proposal.  This is where they list all the various categories of cultural goods and define which items will be subject to import controls and which ones will not.  There are nine separate proposed amendments, each with a different comprehensive set of rules.  The major change being introduced now is the addition of valuation thresholds,  although a variety of changes to the original age threshold of 250 years are also included.

The different amendments appear to be the work of the different political parties represented on the committee. All but one of them  are proposed by only one, two or three MPs.  For example, Amendment 413, sponsored by the 3 MPs from the European Peoples Party, adds a  €50,000 minimum value threshold for most of the categories, including “old books, documents and publications of special interest ” that are more than 250 years old. This provides some relief for bibliophiles.  However, this amendment leaves unchanged the original proposal as it regards incunabula and manuscripts over 250 years old .

But those amendments are probably all irrelevant.  It is Amendment #408, offered by 6 members of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, which seems most likely, if any, to pass.  This amendment makes several significant changes.  With respect to books, the age threshold is reduced dramatically. Where the original proposal exempted books less than 250 years old, this amendment would reduce the age threshold to only 100 years.  On the other hand, relief is offered by the introduction of a price threshold of €50,000 euros. Whether these two changes would raise or lower the number of books that would be covered is hard to say.  Incunabula, which presumably includes incunable leaves, are still treated separately and will have no price threshold.

The greatest impact, however, will be on manuscripts.  Previously only manuscripts over 250 years old were covered. Amendment #408 would reduce this to 50 years;  and there is no compensating price threshold set.  Any 51 year-old hand-written document would be subject to these rules regardless of value.  There is an exception made for manuscripts belonging to their creators, but this is likely to be a very limited case.

It is extremely hard for me to find any sense here.  The fear that terrorists are financing their activities through the looting and trafficking of old letters and hand-written documents seems obviously groundless. I cannot swear that such a thing has never happened and never will, but the extreme improbability of it balanced against the enormous amount of effort and expense involved in controlling it by these methods makes a complete travesty out of any claim that the authors of the regulations had any real concern for the proportionality that their regulations are supposed to  respect. Much more could be said on this, but it seems unnecessary.

Another serious problem is created by an idea that appears for the first time in the amendments: minimum value thresholds.  These are designed to significantly reduce the number of objects that are covered and thus limit the administrative burden placed on the importers and agencies involved.  At first glance this idea makes sense and seems like an improvement over the original regulations, which were to be applied regardless of value.  However, nothing is said here about how the these valuation thresholds will, in practice, be implemented.  I can imagine only two possibilities.

The first possibility is that the importer would be required to submit an appraisal to prove that his goods fell below the minimum value threshold and were thus exempt from control. As far as I can see, there is no other requirement for a current appraisal as part of the import process.  As a result, what we have here is the rather odd consequence that only the goods that are not subject to regulation will have to submit to the expense and delay of competent appraisal.  And this assumes that the individual who wants to import something will have access to or know how to find someone with the necessary expertise.

The only alternative I can think of would be to have the importer simply declare a value himself,  with or without the needed expertise.  But of what use is that?  If there are, in fact, terrorist manuscript dealers who are hoping to traffic their booty in the EU then I think they will be unlikely to declare the value of their goods to be in excess of the crucial threshold.  In this context self-assessment is meaningless. Only the honest and innocent will be burdened by the rules.

As mentioned, there are 9 different amendments, each with its own age and value threshold.  Some are worse than others. For example, Amendment 416 (drafted by MEPs from the Greens/European Free Alliance) does nothing except to change all the age thresholds from 250 years to 75 years.  From my perspective Amendment 414 seems the least unreasonable, setting a minimum value threshold of €50,000 for books created before 1700 and  for “rare manuscripts and incunabula before 1500 (sic).”  But the lack of a reasonable and effective method for implementing the minimum value threshold is still a fatal flaw.

There is, however, one additional amendment (#417) that does seem reasonable and in more sensible alignment with the professed purpose of the proposed rules.  Daniel Dalton, an MP from the UK, has proposed a second Annex which reads,  simply,  “List of Countries at Risk.”  No details are provided with the Amendment text found on the European Commission site, but one can easily imagine what this might entail.  There already exist restrictions for cultural goods imported from Iraq and Syria.  Import regulation for those countries, and any others under similar terrorist threat,  do make some sense. Whether on not this amendment can, in fact, accomplish that is not clear.  Hopefully it is not too late in the process.  As for the other amendments, I think they fall well short of correcting the deeply flawed regulations they attempted to repair.

Searching on viaLibri has been up and down for much of the day today, chiefly as a result of recently moving our data to a cloud server. A few technical issues have emerged during the migration, in several cases causing the site to go down for a while until we made some adjustments. Search is again up and running and we hope to keep it that way, but the issues are not completely resolved and there are a few sites that are still temporarily missing from our results. We will keep working on it until everything is fixed and results from all our search sites are back.

We are very sorry for these interruptions and apologise for any inconvenience they may have caused. Once we have completely recovered we expect you will resume your searches on a much improved viaLibri, in terms of both speed and reliability. In the meantime your patience is greatly appreciated.

-Jim

The York Antiquarian Book Seminar will take place again this September for the fifth year running. It is an excellent educational opportunity for anyone interested in becoming an antiquarian bookseller, or just wants to learn about the marketplace for old and rare books. Three full days of courses will “provide an opportunity for leading specialists to share their expertise and experience with booksellers and collectors in a comprehensive survey of the rare book market, both antiquarian and modern.”

We are strong supporters of this program and will, this year, be making our own contribution to the benefits of participating by giving to all YABS students a free one-year subscription to viaLibri Premium Services. (This is normally a $150 value).

For more information about YABS you can go to their website here: https://www.yabseminar.com/.   You should also note that there are several organisations and individuals who are offering scholarships to cover the full £495 tuition fee. A list of these can also be found on the site.

We have just added to the viaLibri blog an online poll on a question that should be of interest to all our users. It gives them an opportunity to record their opinions regarding European Union regulations, newly proposed, to control the importation of cultural goods, especially early books, manuscripts and prints.

We have also included on the polling page a number of links to documents and articles explaining the issues involved in this important piece of legislation. After you have cast your vote you will have an opportunity to leave your own comments and respond to the comments of others.

If you believe that these issues are important, as we do, then please share our links with your friends and any others who care about  protecting the unrestricted international exchange of early books, manuscripts and prints.

In my earlier post about the proposed EU import regulations I left out a detailed description of the ordeal you will have to go through when importing cultural goods. For most of the dealers I have heard from this is their primary concern. And with good reason.   Although the details have not yet been spelled out completely, from what what I have read so far it seems possible that, for some at least, tranquilisers may be required.

After having now read the documentation several times this is what I understand:

For imports requiring an import licence (this would be incunabula and “rare manuscripts” over 250 years old) the “holder of the goods” must apply for an import licence from a “competent authority.” The “holder of the goods” is defined as the “person who is the owner of the goods or who has a similar “right of disposal” over them or who has physical control of them.” The competent authority, though not defined, will generally be a customs office  that has special competence and training in the evaluation of cultural goods.  These do not yet exist.

In simple cases  this licence application is submitted to the competent customs office along with documentation proving that the goods were exported legally. The competent authority then has 30 days to examine the application and request any additional information or documentation it may feel it needs. Once the application is considered complete the competent authority has an additional 90 days to accept or reject it. When the application is accepted an import licence is issued. The goods may not be imported until the export licence is presented. Since provisions are made for the seizure of goods which enter the EU without a required licence, I assume that the items should not leave the export country until after the export licence has been issued.

The application must be made by a “holder of goods,” which means either ownership or physical possession. So if you are an EU resident and want to buy an incunable or early manuscript from an American seller you will first have to pay for your book, leave it in the US, apply for a licence and wait for the licence to be issued. Only then do you have the item shipped. It will have to be received by the right kind of customs office and examined there to make sure that the goods received correspond with the item described in the license. Only then will you be allowed to have your book.

I should note that Article 7 refers to restricting the number of customs offices that will be competent to release cultural goods. This suggests unavoidable difficulties if you happen to live someplace that is far from the right kind of customs office. If you are like me it is unlikely  you will be comfortable having a valuable incunable or manuscript sent to a distant customs office to be examined and then sent back to you in the post. It is not mentioned at whose expense and risk such a shipment would be made.

The situation is only a bit simpler for books (or prints) that are not incunables. These are a separate category which require a self-generated importer statement instead of an import licence. But the problems are similar. The statement also needs to be presented to a “competent” customs office which will physically examine the book to determine that it corresponds with the statement you provided. It may also decide to conduct an “expertise,” which would presumably involve some additional delay. It is, again,  unclear what the regulations anticipate happening in the situation where you live some distance from the right kind of customs office. Does the book get sent directly to customs and held there until your statement is received and your book examined? After that do you need to go to the customs office personally to recover your property, or will it be sent to you in the post?

None of these problems are meaningfully addressed in any of the documents I have read, which leads me to suspect that the people behind it all have yet to figure out a tolerable solution to them.  I know I certainly haven’t.

Or is it possible that the regulations just assume that these steps will all be handled by customs brokers, and they just forgot to mention it? If that is the case, then the situation may be even worse than we imagine.