The new list of monuments is intended to help their owners

Prague - The Ministry of Culture plans to revise the entire list of cultural monuments currently managed by the National Heritage Institute (NPÚ). The plan is part of the substantive intention of the heritage law, which the ministry presented to journalists today. Approximately 40,000 immovable monuments and around 50,000 movable artifacts are to be reviewed. The office aims to complete this within ten years.
A contentious and yet unclear issue, even among those involved in preparing the law, is the question of declaring works by living authors as monuments. Art historian Mojmír Horyna supports not declaring these works, as he believes they have sufficient protection under copyright law.
However, Jiří Merger, a member of the Czech Chamber of Architects, stated today that works by living authors should also be declared monuments. He cited the ČKD building by Alena Šrámková in Prague's Můstku as an example, which is a cultural monument. If it were not a monument, the recent reconstruction would have resulted differently, and the developer would have significantly altered the building despite Šrámková's involvement in the renovation.
Regardless of whether buildings by living authors are declared monuments or not, this will only apply to future listings. Hence, for these reasons, monuments such as the Ještěd transmitter or the Máj department store should not be removed from the list.
According to proponents, the heritage law is one of the most complex legal norms as it affects a multitude of different stakeholders. Changes also pertain to archaeology; for instance, amateur treasure hunting using metal detectors is to become illegal. The law should more effectively penalize poor care of monuments. It anticipates increasing fines from tens of thousands of crowns to millions; this change is already included in an amendment to the existing law, which is currently on its way between the government and parliament.
A monument can be damaged either by inappropriate activities or by "inaction", and the law aims to sanction both. If someone poorly maintains a property adjacent to a monument and this poor condition damages the monument, the state could even expropriate this property. This could happen at the request of the owner of the monument being threatened by the neighboring building.
Some heritage professionals fear the mentioned new registry of monuments, asserting that the Czech Republic could lose many artifacts in this way. Representatives of the ministry stated today that some properties or items were previously registered in contradiction to the then-applicable legal regulations, which is also why the list needs to be revised.
The ministry does not want to estimate how many monuments could potentially be removed from the list. It also does not fear that it will not manage to create the new registry of monuments within the given timeframe. The new listings will not affect monuments enjoying the highest level of protection, namely national cultural monuments, which will remain national cultural monuments.
According to the ministry, which will now manage the entire list, it is currently unclear what constitutes a monument; the list is more of an informational nature. The new central and fully digitized list is to be more precise and definitive and will also assist owners of monuments who are exempt from property tax - they will no longer need to prove this fact.
"The list should suffice for proving that a given property is a monument, just as today an extract from the land register serves to prove property ownership," said Jiří Klusoň from the ministry's heritage department.
Part of the intention is also to digitize the entire list. This is expected to cost 125 million crowns, which, according to the proposed law, should come from European sources. Digitizing the list is one of the projects that the government recommended on Wednesday to be eligible for funding from European funds.
The transfer of the list and associated activities should likely not require more ministry employees. The Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) created for the draft law states that the adoption of the law should "not increase the administrative burden for the state administration and other entities overall."