France to Return Looted Artefacts of Colonial Era? New Bill Aims to Ease Process of Transfer

The French government on Wednesday discussed a new bill aimed at expediting the return of artworks acquired during the colonial era to their countries of origin, France 24 reported. According to France’s culture ministry, if passed, the legislation would allow for the return of cultural items in France’s national collection that were “originating from states that, due to illicit appropriation, were deprived of them” between 1815 and 1972, France 24 said.

The ministry noted that the law would apply to artworks acquired through “theft, looting, transfer or donation obtained through coercion or violence, or from a person who was not entitled to dispose of them,” France 24 reported. A government spokeswoman said the bill was presented during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, and the Senate is expected to debate it in September.

The Bill Would Simplify the Return of Looted Colonial-Era Artefacts from French Museums

The draft law is intended to simplify France’s current system, under which each return of an artwork from the national collection must be approved through an individual vote. France 24 reported that the new bill is the third and final legislative effort aimed at facilitating the return of colonial-era and looted cultural property.

France returned 26 formerly royal artefacts to Benin in 2021, including a throne. These items came from the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum in Paris, which holds most of the 90,000 African works estimated to be in French museums, according to a 2018 expert report commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron, France 24 said.

Macron, who has taken a more progressive stance than his predecessors on France’s colonial past, had pledged in a speech to students in Burkina Faso shortly after taking office in 2017 to facilitate the return of African cultural heritage within five years.

France Has Returned a Few Artefacts Earlier as Well

Earlier this year, France returned a “talking drum” seized in 1916 by French colonial forces from the Ebrie tribe to Ivory Coast. In 2019, then Prime Minister Edouard Philippe handed over a sword believed to have belonged to West African Islamic scholar Omar Tall to Senegal’s president, France 24 noted.

While other European nations such as Germany and the Netherlands have repatriated some artefacts, France’s new bill is expected to make such efforts more systematic. The UK, by contrast, continues to resist high-profile restitution claims involving the Parthenon Marbles and the Kohinoor diamond.

France 24 said the two earlier related laws–one focused on property looted by the Nazis and another on returning human remains–were passed in 2023. 

(Inputs From ANI)

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