Paris: France's government on Wednesday discussed a bill that would streamline the process of returning artworks and cultural artefacts looted from the country's former colonies over more than a century of imperial rule. Under current laws, the return of each item in France's extensive national collection must be voted on individually. The proposed legislation aims to expedite the return of looted artworks to their countries of origin, officials said.
According to France24.com, if approved, the law would facilitate the return of cultural goods in France's national collection that originated from states deprived of them due to illicit appropriation between 1815 and 1972, as stated by the culture ministry. The law will cover works obtained through theft, looting, coercion, or violence, or from individuals not entitled to dispose of them.
In 2021, France returned 26 formerly royal artefacts, including a throne, to Benin. These artefacts were part of the collection at the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum in Paris, which houses the majority of the 90,000 African works estimated to be in French museums, based on an expert report commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron in 2018.
Since his election in 2017, Macron has acknowledged past French abuses in Africa more openly than his predecessors. He pledged to facilitate the return of African cultural heritage within five years during a speech to students in Burkina Faso shortly after taking office.
Earlier this year, a "talking drum" seized by French colonial troops from the Ebrie tribe in 1916 was returned to Ivory Coast. In 2019, France's then prime minister Edouard Philippe handed over a sword to the Senegalese president, believed to have belonged to 19th-century West African Islamic scholar and leader, Omar Tall.
Other European countries, including Germany and the Netherlands, have returned a limited number of artefacts in recent years. Meanwhile, Britain faces multiple high-profile claims but has refused to return the Parthenon Marbles to Greece and the Kohinoor diamond to India.
The French draft law is the third and final legislative effort to accelerate the removal and return of artworks held in France's national collection. Two other laws—one for the return of property looted by the Nazis and a second for the return of human remains—were approved in 2023.