The French National Assembly unanimously adopted on Monday evening a bill aimed at regulating and facilitating the procedures for the restitution of illegally acquired cultural property to their countries of origin.
This framework law concerns cultural property illicitly taken between November 20, 1815 and April 23, 1972, notably through theft, looting, coercion or violence. This period extends from “the signing of the second Treaty of Paris, which closed a vast restitution operation between European states,” to “the entry into force of the 1970 UNESCO Convention” on illicit trafficking, stated the Minister of Culture, Catherine Pégard.
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The bill provides that, under certain conditions, these goods may be removed from the public domain for restitution to a requesting state, thus allowing its populations to reclaim fundamental elements of their heritage. The minister emphasized during the debates at the National Assembly that this text aims to “provide a clear framework for organizing future restitutions and increasing efficiency.”
Until now, due to the principle of inalienability of public collections, restitutions could only occur through specific laws adopted on a case-by-case basis. According to French media, the adoption of this text should allow for the processing of several requests already made, notably by African countries, and could lead to a significant increase in this type of request once the law comes into force.
This bill is part of a dynamic initiated several years ago. In 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron announced in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, his desire to move this issue forward. Last January, the text was unanimously adopted by the Senate.
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According to the French Ministry of Culture, since 2023, Parliament has adopted two framework laws concerning respectively the restitution of property looted from Jews by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945, as well as that of human remains kept in French public collections. The bill examined on April 13 is considered a complement to these measures.
Unanimously adopted with 170 votes, the text must still be the subject of an agreement between the National Assembly and the Senate before its eventual final adoption.
