THE 1988-89 report of the Reviewing Committee' ad- dresses some criticisms recently levelled at the British system of controlling the export of works of art. In brief, its message is that the Waverley criteria are fair and have been largely effective in the past. If the system now appears to be approaching a crisis, this has less to do with the mechanism itself than with the failure to back it up with adequate government funds. The five-year freeze in National Museums' acquisitions budgets has coincided with an ex- plosion in the art market, leaving the residual financial burden to the far from sufficient resources of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the National Art Collections Fund. Small wonder then if the deferrals recommended by the Committee result in ever fewer purchases totalling ever larger sums. The action taken by the Minister in December to add an extra three months to the six-month stop on Canova's group of the Three Graces from Woburn Abbey should, however, be seen as a response to an excep- tionally muddled and difficult case rather than a signal that the system is beyond repair.

An even more exacting test, mentioned only briefly in the report, awaits the export control system in three years time, when the European Economic Community becomes a single market on Ist January 1993. The implications of this were recently debated in a seminar held by the NACF, at which the speakers included the British Minister for the Arts, a European Commissioner, the Director General of the French National Museums, the Director of the National Gallery, the Chairman of the Export Reviewing Committee, and representatives from the V. & A., the auction houses and the trade. Although a largely British affair (there was a pertinent intervention from a Dutch curator in the audience), the seminar helpfully clarified the European Commission's position and revealed a good deal of agree- ment on principles. Unfortunately little progress was made on the practical problem of how export control mechanisms, whatever they may be, can be enforced once physical customs barriers are removed.

The Treaty of Rome permits obstacles to free trade within the Community to protect each country's artistic patrimony. It was heartening to discover from the European Commissioner that each member state will retain the right to its own control mechanism, provided this does not prove 'unduly burdensome' and that the British system of ad hoc certification rather than predetermined listing might prove more acceptable than others as a model for the ultimate harmonisation that the Commission perceives to be desirable. Although this was music to the ears of those who support the Waverley system (in the words of the Director of the National Gallery: 'It is swift, it is fair, it is clear, it is cheap'), perhaps it is a shade quixotic to expect the other eleven member states to adopt arrangements which depend so heavily on British notions of mutual consent. Nor is it clear that fair play can be relied on to continue once the umpire has been removed from the field.

Only one of the twenty-six cases heard by the Reviewing Committee last year involved export to an EEC country and it might be supposed that the European internal market poses little threat. The fear is, however, that works of art may be silently removed by their owners or the trade to member states with weak controls, and from there be exported unopposed to what one speaker described as 'distant horizons'. Opinions vary as to the seriousness of this danger. Some feel that illegal movement of outstanding pictures would be impracticable, although the decorative arts and - above all - archaeological finds are agreed to be more vulnerable. Listing of privately owned works of national importance, which some felt to be politically objectionable and unfairly prejudicial to market prices, would in any case not cope with new discoveries, which frequently appear before the Reviewing Committee (but might, were listing compulsory after 1992, be swiftly removed elsewhere). An effective ring fence around the Community may prove necessary to reinforce national systems, however unpalatable the idea of'Fortress Europe' may be to unregenerate free traders.

Since the seminar the European Commission has issued a 'Communication' as a basis for consultation.2 It concedes that additional measures are likely to be necessary both at national and at Community level to support existing (or modified) export controls. At national level it puts forward the idea of fines and a closer regulation of the art market - and here the suggestion put forward byJulian Agnew of a dealers' code of practice would be a helpful start. The suggested measures at community level become ever more bureaucratic and tangled, culminating in the idea of a mandatory Europe-wide list of national treasures, to be in place by December 1992! The nightmare alternative is of customs officials in, say, Portugal trying to determine the country of origin of an individual piece in order to decide which of twelve different sets of export control apply to it.

If member states are to be allowed to retain their indi-vidual laws of export control in the medium term, they will need an effective means of enforcing them within national boundaries - whatever provisions are made at Community level. Spot checks and even a special customs channel for works of art should not be ruled out. Otherwise we are at an impasse, clearly expressed in the Minister's speech at the seminar: 'Although we have . . . the best possible present system, it will have to adapt in some measure to the single market.' The danger is that adaptation will eliminate the threefold advantages of the present arrangements, and that an unfairer, more draconian mechanism will have to be introduced - in the name of free trade!