France passes important law for restitution of works stolen by Nazis

Last June 29, in France, theNational Assembly (i.e., the lower house of Parliament) unanimously passed, as had the Senate on May 23, an important bill concerning the restitution of cultural property looted as part of the anti-Semitic persecutions perpetrated between 1933 and 1945, during the Nazi era.

This bill introduces into the French Cultural Heritage Code an exception to the principle of inalienability of public collections: previously, in order to return a work that ended up in French public collections to its rightful owners, it was necessary to enact an ad hoc legislative text. Now, the new law establishes a framework that allows the removal of looted property from the state domain in order to return it to its rightful owners, without having to resort to specific legislative texts.

Last year, the law of Feb. 21, 2022 on the return or restitution of certain cultural property to the beneficiaries of their owners who were victims of anti-Semitic persecution allowed the return or restitution of 15 works from public collections; in the future, it will no longer be necessary to adopt special laws like last year’s to return works looted as part of anti-Semitic persecution.

The decision to return works from public collections will be made after consultation with the Commission for the Compensation of Victims of Spoliation (Commission pour l’indemnisation des victimes de spoliations, CIVS), which is in charge of ascertaining the facts that led to the spoliation. The text of the law adopted by the Senate, having been amended by the National Assembly, will still have to be further analyzed by a joint committee of deputies and senators to agree on the final version of the text. The law will then be finally adopted.

Image: Bourbon Palace, seat of the National Assembly. Photo: Wikimedia/DXR

France passes important law for restitution of works stolen by Nazis

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