Burying a four-centuries-old monopoly with more than a hint of regret, France's auctioneers began their first day as a free market profession by slamming their new governing rules.

Pressured by Brussels to open the art market to competition, French auctioneers have lost their exclusive right to put art objects under the hammer in France.

Now hitherto-barred giants like US auctioneer Sotheby's and Christie's, a British firm owned by French retail magnate Francois Pinault, can open for business in France. So in theory can anyone who passes the professional exams.

But auctioneers, attending a conference to mark their first day of independence from the official status that protected them from outside competition, had little praise for the new regime.

"A complicated, pernickety, and in many regards obsolete set of rules and an unchanged fiscal regime is being imposed on us," Herve Poulain, president of the new industry association SYMEV, told reporters.

"What we have ended up with is a brain-twister that complicates our lives," added Jean-Pierre Osenat, auctioneer at Fontainebleau outside Paris.

Apart from a series of "accounting headaches", first on the list of grievances is the obligation for a type of insurance payment that auctioneers say is out of all proportion to the risks entailed and severely erodes their margins.

Measures to protect the consumer from the consequences of wild bids, in which a buyer bids high and then finds he can't pay up, will only serve as a loophole for those who have simply changed their minds, Poulain said, adding it threw the whole concept of public auctions into question.

But liberalising the art market in France, the poor cousin of London and New York since the 1950s, should inject fresh dynamism into an industry whose 16th-century traditions left it looking dusty, inbred and arcane.

Yet to be decided is the auctioneers' new French title. Formerly known as "commissaires-priseurs", literally "official valuers", they have asked the guardian of the French language, the Academie Francaise, to approve the term "maitre d'encheres", or auction master.

Poulain said Paris would soon start rivalling London in the fight for art market share. "We should be able win a predominant position with regard to London, given the quality of our auctioneers and our position within Europe," he said.

But such ambitions face a double hurdle. France levies a 5.5 per cent import tax on artworks that does not exist in Britain. And a three per cent royalty charged to an artwork's seller on behalf of other inheritors has yet to be harmonised in Europe, and will only be introduced in Britain with some years' delay.

Meanwhile, the future of the Drouot auction house, a rabbit warren of sale rooms in the heart of the antiques district near the Opera in central Paris, remains unresolved.

Drouot Chairman Dominique Ribeyre said a group of auctioneers were banding together with a plan to purchase the building, its famous name and its lucrative Drouot Gazette detailing forthcoming sales, after other proposals melted away.

"The matter should be resolved by September," Ribeyre said. Thierry Pomez, auctioneer from the northeastern French town of Troyes, said the auctioneers' shift in status from Justice Ministry official to company head was radical.

"We have undergone a veritable electric shock, moving from the notion of public service to the notion of profitability," he said. "For the moment the mood (among the auctioneers) is rather negative, but I dare to hope that the changes will be positive."