France. The bill relating to the restitution of cultural property, presented by Rachida Dati last July, was finally voted on by the Senate on January 28. This text includes numerous Senate amendments accepted by the Government. The most important point concerned the examination of the request from a State wishing to recover cultural property belonging to French public collections.
Until now, a specific law was required to authorize restitution. There were two: in 2020 for Benin and Senegal, and in July 2025 for the benefit of Côte d’Ivoire. The objective of this framework law is to no longer go through Parliament to release cultural property but to authorize it by a decree of the Council of State on precise criteria and especially after a specific instruction. So that, as Senator Pierre Ouzoulias recalled: “We (the senators) cede part of our competence to the Government. » The Senate is particularly active on this subject and has been working on it for a good twenty years.
However, the instruction procedure appearing in the July text relied too much on the services of the Ministry of Culture, in the eyes of the senators. It did include a scientific commission formed in consultation with the State, but this was optional. In the new text, this commission is obligatory, but above all it precedes a public and reasoned opinion, rendered by a new body: the National Restitution Commission. This body, attached to the High Council of Museums of France, includes parliamentarians, magistrates from the Council of State and the Court of Cassation, as well as qualified figures in various disciplines (archaeology, ethnology, art history). The Jean-Luc Martinez report, which inspired this framework law, was however not in favor of a national commission.
The objective assigned to this body, at least by the senators, is to constitute a body of doctrine and a methodology on restitutions which ensures continuity between requests. It is also a question, as the senators have reminded us on several occasions, of avoiding the “act of the prince” – understanding a President of the Republic (randomly Emmanuel Macron) who decides on his own to return cultural property for diplomatic purposes. In addition to this body of doctrine, the senators introduced two other “guardrails” to a procedure that will escape them: the obligation to be informed of any request and the production of an annual report by the Government.
The final text also incorporates the specific provisions made by the Senate Culture Committee, regarding works entered into public collections by donation or bequest. Among these provisions, the “silence amounting to agreement” of the beneficiaries or heirs of donors risks being challenged by the Council of State.
Finally, for symbolism, but symbolism counts a lot in restitutions, the voted text validates the chronological boundary of 1815 and the Treaty of Vienna as the start of the period of eligibility for requests for restitutions, but no longer sets it at June 10, which corresponds to the day after the signing of the final act of the Congress of Vienna, but at the date of the second Treaty of Paris, i.e. November 20, 1815. For the senators, “this date is the opening date of the period during which the second colonial empire was gradually constituted”. Symbolic and subtle. The text must now be discussed in the National Assembly.
