A Comparative Study of Criminal Liability for Art Forgery in Selected European Countries

In this paper, the author would like to outline relevant legal problems of the domestic legislation in Poland criminalizing art forgery. Academic authors, for many years, have been postulating an increase in the protection of works of art against offences such as forgery. This would increase the safety and fair trade in the art market. However, the legislator seems to ignore the problem. The author compared Polish law with similar legislative solutions in four European countries. There are two types of criminalizing art forgery. It can be approached as fraud and its penalization can be provided for either in the Criminal Code or copyright law. Another approach is direct penalization of art forgery, envisaged either in an Act dedicated to the protection of art or in one of the chapters of the Criminal Code. The author analyses the laws applicable in the Italian Republic, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the French Republic, and the Federal Republic of Germany and assigns them to either group. The aim is to verify if any of the solutions could inspire the Polish legislator to introduce similar provisions in domestic law to help reduce this type of crime and improve criminal procedure in cases of art forgery.