Updated guidelines for the police force and the judiciary regarding the protection of cultural property

The Min­is­ter of State for Cul­ture and the Me­dia and the Fed­er­al Min­istry of Jus­tice, to­geth­er with ex­perts from ad­min­is­tra­tion and those work­ing in the field, have pro­duced an up­dat­ed com­pi­la­tion of in­for­ma­tion to sup­port pub­lic pros­e­cu­tors, the po­lice force, cus­toms of­fi­cials and cul­tur­al ad­min­is­tra­tions in their prac­ti­cal work in the area of cul­tur­al prop­er­ty pro­tec­tion.

The guide­lines con­tain con­crete ad­vice on ini­ti­at­ing and con­duct­ing crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings in Ger­many as well as in­for­ma­tion about in­ter­na­tion­al le­gal as­sis­tance and ad­min­is­tra­tive resti­tu­tion pro­ceed­ings. They al­so pro­vide a break­down of in­for­ma­tion chan­nels along with de­tails of which peo­ple need to be in­volved and con­tacts at the re­spon­si­ble bod­ies.

Min­is­ter of State for Cul­ture Clau­dia Roth said that close co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the rel­e­vant cul­tur­al, in­ves­tiga­tive and ju­di­cial au­thor­i­ties was cru­cial in or­der to pro­tect cul­tur­al prop­er­ty ef­fec­tive­ly and in par­tic­u­lar to en­sure suc­cess­ful resti­tu­tion prac­tice. More than any­thing, she said, this in­clud­ed di­rect di­a­logue be­tween the au­thor­i­ties and al­so a sound knowl­edge of the rel­e­vant le­gal frame­work and ju­ris­dic­tions, in par­tic­u­lar so as to be able to in­volve lo­cal­ly or­gan­ised pub­lic pros­e­cu­tion of­fices ear­ly on in the pro­cess.

The guide­lines on the pro­tec­tion of cul­tur­al prop­er­ty were pub­lished for the first time in 2010. They have now been adapt­ed to the cur­rent le­gal sit­u­a­tion, in par­tic­u­lar fol­low­ing the 2016 amend­ment of the law on the pro­tec­tion of cul­tur­al prop­er­ty.
The guide­lines are avail­able at: www.kul­turgutschutz-deutsch­land.de