French lawmakers debate bill to return colonial-era looted African artefacts
France's lawmakers will on Monday debate a bill to simplify the return of artworks looted during the colonial era to their countries of origin.
France still has in its possession tens of thousands of artworks and other prized artefacts that it looted from its colonial empire.
The draft legislation to return them was unanimously approved by the upper house in January, and now needs to be backed by the lower house, the National Assembly, before it can become law.
President Emmanuel Macron has made it a political promise to return the cultural items, and has gone further than his predecessors in admitting past French abuses in Africa, AFP reported.
Speaking on a visit to the Burkina Faso capital Ouagadougou shortly after taking office in 2017, Macron vowed that France would never again interfere in its former colonies and promised to facilitate the return of African cultural heritage within five years.
Designed to streamline the process, the bill under consideration specifically targets property acquired between 1815 and 1972.
Political wrangling
Former colonial powers in Europe have slowly been moving to send back some artworks obtained during their imperial conquests – but France is hindered by its current legislation, which requires every item in the national collection to be voted on individually.
France has been flooded with restitution demands, including from Algeria, Mali, and Benin.
In 2025, France's parliament approved the return to the Ivory Coast of a "talking drum" that colonial troops took from the Ebrie tribe in 1916. It returned home in March.
The bill has faced political wrangling in France, with the hard-left France Unbowed party (LFI) arguing that its scope should be extended.
The far-right National Rally party, on the other hand, wants to limit the restitution of colonial-era art only to states that have "cordial" relations with France.
A series of coups in West Africa have brought several military juntas hostile to Paris into power in former French colonies in West Africa in recent years.
In 2023, France adopted two so-called framework laws to return objects in two categories: one for goods looted from Jewish families during World War II, and another for the repatriation of human remains from public collections.
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