Questions on protection of cultural heritage

Despite the progress realized during the last decades regarding the protection of the cultural heritage, there is still a lot to do in order to arrive in a satisfactory regime. The attention of those who will deal with this issue in the future must be in particular focused on: (a) the possible assimilation of the status of the illegally exported cultural objects to that of stolen objects, in order to increase the protection, combined with an effort to limit to some extent the categories of cultural objects deserving higher protection; (b) to endow with more efficiency the certificates of origin; (c) to rectify or (even better) to abolish the regime of the so called bona fide purchase of cultural objects; and (d) to fight for unconditional return of stolen or illegally exported cultural objects to the State of their origin, without pretexts of any kind.