Fears that British representatives might not pursue the interests of the UK art market with the vigour that they have shown throughout long and tough negotiations proved unfounded.
Under last Wednesday’s agreement the provisions of the directive on the harmonisation of artists’ resale rights will be significantly less damaging to art market interests than those which the European Commission initially intended to bring into force in 1999.
Anthony Browne, chairman of the British Art Market Federation, praised the Government for sticking to the uncompromising stance which BAMF had advocated.
“While we are disappointed that this Directive has to come into force at all, tough negotiations by the British Government with all party support have secured very considerable improvements to the highly damaging proposal originally put forward by the European Commission in 1996,” he said.
The Directive will not now come into force until January 1, 2006 and the levy will be applied only to the work of living artists until January 1, 2012.
Under the full terms of the harmonisation directive, each time a work of art is sold a levy is paid to the artist or their descendants for up to 70 years after the artist’s death.
Anthony Browne, who has followed the Directive along the sometimes inexplicable turns of its passage through the European legislative process, takes a realistic view of the situation. He believes that the importance of the delay in implementation should not be underestimated. “We are confident that the outcome substantially secures the competitive position of the British art market for the time being.” he commented.
In particular he notes that it will be more than 10 years before the levy will be payable to artists’ heirs, so that the market for Modern masters such as Picasso and Matisse will not be affected in the short term.
When the directive left the European Parliament in December, many of the carefully negotiated compromises had disappeared in a series of amendments, but the present agreement, negotiated under the Swedish presidency of the council over the past six months, claws back many of the concessions.
Particularly important is the return of the concept of capping the levy payable on any one work of art. Under the new agreement the maximum levy per transaction will be Euro12,500 (about (£7,600). This is an important consideration when vendors are considering where to sell high value works of art.
The lower threshold at which any levy is payable has been raised to Euro 3000 (£1800) from the Euro 1000 previously proposed.
In between these two limits droit de suite is to be levied on a sliding scale according to value:
under E3000 0%
E3000-50,000 4%
E50,000-200,000 3%
E200,000-350,000 1%
E350,000-500,000 0.5%
over E500,000 0.25%
While there will be further stages of the European legislative machine for the directive to pass through, these figures are likely to be the ones which will apply when it comes into force.
New deal struck on droit de suite
– 10 year delay on full implementation – £7600 cap on maximum levy. The final conditions under which droit de suite is likely to be introduced to Britain were revealed last week when hard-won concessions, rejected by the European Parliament last December, were substantially re-instated at a meeting of the permanent representatives in Brussels.
