It is an offence to sell ivory items without a certificate, even if they were made more than 50 years ago
Exceptions based on the time elapsed are excluded. It is necessary to make the fight against illegal sales and elephant poaching more effective
Key points
From jewelleryto pendants, from figurines to ornaments depicting animals, made of ivory, nothing may be sold without certification, even if the items were created more than 50 years ago. The Court of Cassation, in confirming the criminal offence rather than the less serious administrative offence, rules out the existence of any exemption from the rule prohibiting the sale of ivory items without the CITES accompanying certificate (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, signed in Washington in 1989), which must be issued by the competent authorities of the Member State into which the items are imported. The Supreme Court notes that, according to currently available information, there are a great many antique ivory items in the Union derived fromIndian and African elephants that are threatened with extinction.
Regulatory developments
A situation that makes it necessary to step up the illegal trade as the fight against poaching. Difficult – in the vast sea of items in circulation, some of which may be accompanied by certificates issued over 40 years ago, and in the absence of an obligation on the part of states to update them periodically – to ascertain the correspondence between the certificate issued and the material offered for sale, partly due to regulatory changes.
The Court of Cassation has rejected the defence’s argument that processed items acquired more than half a century ago were exempt, as identified by EC Regulation 338/97 and as permitted by EC Regulation 865/2006. This is because a stricter regime was subsequently established, including through Commission Regulation (EU) 2021/2280, which expressly mentions items containing elephant ivory in order to exclude them from any exemption. It also requires that processed specimens ‘which have undergone significant alteration from their natural raw state, for use in jewellery, ornamentation, art, practical purposes, or in the field of musical instruments, more than fifty years prior to the entry into force of this Regulation’. In these circumstances, therefore, the decision of the management body of the country concerned is always required.
