In Belgium, cultural heritage legislators have put into place an administrative police for the protection of movable and immovable cultural heritage and elaborated instruments in order to ensure this protection regime. The question I will examine here is how these instruments (this regime) impact the owner’s rights. In other words, what are the effects of the cultural heritage protection regime on the owner? And are they balanced? Is it a model of action for the owners (effective)? To answer the question, I will first briefly sketch the Belgian context of cultural heritage law before examining the effects of this law on the owner: the protective instruments and their obligations imposed on the owner in order to protect his monument or his cultural object. Secondly, I will analyse the proportionality of the imposed protection measures, and more specifically whether the law provides, as a counterpart and as another effect, some compensation to balance the imposed burdens on the owner.
de Clippele, M.-S. (2015). Owning Cultural heritage, a poisoned gift? Ius Commune Conference, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/184290