Minister of Culture Sergiu Prodan believes that everyone can help protect the movable cultural property, which is the supreme wealth for any culture and any people. “At the same time, it is essential to think about how to create cultural goods that become heritage for the next generations because our task is not only to protect what we received from our predecessors, but also to create for the future,” Sergiu Prodan stated in the Forum of Creators and Owners of Movable Cultural Property, which was staged for the first time, IPN reports.
According to the Ministry of Culture, the forum represents a logical continuation of the amendments made in 2022-2023 to the national legislative framework on record keeping and circulation of cultural goods, whose purpose is to adjust the national legislation to international and European normative provisions. At the same time, in order to encourage cooperation in the field with EU Member States, the Service for Registration and Circulation of Movable Cultural Property was created.
“Thus, we fulfilled our commitment assumed by ratifying the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. It is an even more important commitment today, when a war has been waged for over two years just a few hundred kilometers from us, in which heritage monuments are destroyed,” noted Minister Prodan.
In this connection, but also in the logic of ratification by the Republic of Moldova of the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, the Ministry of Culture expressed its interest in ratifying the Second Protocol to the Convention. In particular, the Second Protocol prohibits the deliberate destruction of cultural property, stipulates that its deliberate destruction in an armed conflict can constitute a criminal offence and promotes the conservation and restoration of cultural property affected by the armed conflict.
The Forum of Creators and Owners of Movable Cultural Property was organized by the Service for Registration and Circulation of Movable Cultural Property under the auspices of UNESCO and in partnership with the Ministry of Culture.
