Fighting Cultural Property Trafficking: The Italian Criminal Law Framework and its Forthcoming Reform

This paper aims at offering a comprehensive overview of the normative framework developed by Italy, over many decades of legal evolution, to prevent and punish trafficking in cultural property – a criminal phenomenon that is still a major problem in the country, which has traditionally been an unwilling source of artworks and antiquities for the global market. The analysis includes both administrative and penal provisions, and related sanctions, as well as both specific legislation and those criminal offences which, albeit conceived with an unspecific and broader scope of application, apply to relevant links in the trafficking chain. At the same time, the essay discusses the changes to be introduced by the reform project currently pending in the Italian Parliament, which proposes to bring into the Italian Penal Code, in a new specific section, all the main criminal offences against cultural heritage. Besides pursuing a self-evident symbolic purpose, the law project includes the introduction of a set of completely new provisions, aimed at strengthening the fight against international cultural property trafficking. In this view, for the first time in the Italian legal history the lawmaker appears intentioned to specifically address the role of Italy also as a possible transit or market country for cultural objects stolen, unlawfully excavated, or illegally exported from other countries, and, more broadly, to correct a series of perceived shortcomings of the current – already quite tight – net of penal provisions.