Compromise on EU art levy

Britain feared the levy would hit London's art market

Britain has brokered a 15-year delay on a controversial EU art levy which it feared would harm London's art market and cost thousands of jobs.

The European Union scheme would have ensured that artists received a royalty of up to 4% every time one of their works was sold anywhere in the EU.

But at a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday officials voted to adopt a watered down version of the original plans agreed by the EU states - and delay its implementation for up to 15 years.

The UK Government said royalty payouts and lost trade would reduce the value of the UK's art market from £3.2bn to £2.5bn-a-year.

It said the levy would cost up to 8,500 art industry jobs, with trade being diverted to the US and Switzerland to avoid the levy.

But the European Commission is unhappy at the extent of the compromise worked out by the European partners.

'Unacceptable' precedent

The original proposals would have meant that any work of art worth more than about £600, would have attracted the additional levy to be passed to the artist, or to their estate if they had died within the last 70 years.

Under the compromise deal the threshold for payments is raised from 1,000 to 4,000 Euros, and there is a five-year delay before the rules have to be implemented

An upper limit for a payment on any one work of art is set at 12,500 Euros.

But most controversially, special permission has been granted for those countries like Britain that do not have any kind of levy at the moment, to wait a further 10 years before adopting the measures.

Britain regards this deal, which was arranged by officials on Wednesday and has to be rubber stamped by ministers as a reasonable compromise.

The commissioner for the internal market Frits Bolkestein, however, is said to regard the 15-year delay as unacceptable.

He believes it sets a bad precedent for other nations' attempts to avoid implementing internal market rules they do not like.