The Hellenic peninsula -Greece Albania Bosnia and Bulgaria, Stefano Bonsignori, Google_Art_Project, public domain. The Committee for Cultural Policy objects to renewing the U.S.–Greece cultural property agreement because the current restrictions have become so broad—covering huge time periods, many object types, and especially coins—that they function more like a general embargo than a targeted tool against looting. CCP argues that Greece has not shown, in a concrete and measurable way, that these sweeping U.S. border restrictions are actually deterring pillage, particularly when many reported crimes are domestic thefts – even by church officials – or local opportunism better addressed through stronger inventories, security, and enforcement at home.
As Published in the Federal Register
To the Members of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee:
The Committee for Cultural Policy, Inc. (“CCP”)[1] respectfully submits this formal objection to the proposed five-year extension of the Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU” or “Agreement”) between the United States and the Hellenic Republic (Greece) under the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act (“CPIA”). This request is scheduled for CPAC’s consideration at its March 3–5, 2026 meeting, with public comments submitted through Regulations.gov.[2]
CCP is a U.S.-based nonprofit educational organization dedicated to the study of cultural property law and policy, the promotion of responsible preservation practices, and the lawful international exchange of art and antiquities for scientific, cultural, and educational purposes. CCP has participated in CPAC proceedings for many years and has a longstanding record of engagement on CPIA implementation, museum and art trade ethics and policy, archaeological practice, and the cultural rights of source-country and diaspora communities.
This comment focuses specifically on the statutory limits Congress placed on import restrictions, and the public-interest implications of sweeping, renewable designated lists that increasingly function as generalized embargoes rather than targeted, evidence-driven deterrents to looting.
In CCP’s view, Greece has not carried the burden required for a five-year extension under the CPIA. The request fails on the statute’s four determinations as applied to the exceptionally broad scope of the current designated list, including categories, especially coinage and later-period material, that do not align with the CPIA’s limits (“archaeological material of cultural significance” and “ethnological material of a nonindustrial society”). A designated list of such overbreadth is incapable of fair administration at the border.[3]
The record also shows that the U.S.–Greece agreement has not provided “substantial benefit” in deterring pillage when compared to less drastic, more effective measures that remain available, including transparent inventories, targeted law-enforcement cooperation, and EU-based export controls already applicable to Greece as an EU Member State.
These concerns have been raised repeatedly and prominently by the American museum community, including the Association of Art Museum Directors (“AAMD”), which opposed the breadth of the original Greece proposal. Museums have long warned that renewals would be difficult to justify without measurable improvement and meaningful compliance with CPIA benchmarks.[4] CCP’s concerns are consistent with those museum-sector objections: the Greece agreement has expanded in breadth while remaining weak on the statutory showings Congress required.
The CPIA’s renewal standard is evidence-driven, category-specific, and not satisfied by generalized assertions.
Congress authorized import restrictions only when all four CPIA determinations are met. Renewals require the requesting State to show that the conditions warranting restrictions continue and that it has taken adequate “self-help” measures. In a request for a renewal, these determinations cannot be satisfied by broad claims about the existence of looting somewhere within a nation’s borders, nor by citing isolated criminal cases, nor by reliance on the mere fact that cultural heritage crimes occur globally. Rather, the statute calls for a showing tied to the particular categories proposed for restriction, and a demonstration that the U.S. market and U.S. border controls are meaningfully connected to current pillage and trafficking of those categories.[5]
The breadth of the present Greece designated list makes this evidentiary requirement especially important. The current U.S. MOU for Greece covers an enormous time span and an exceptionally wide range of object types and materials, including coinage. It extends into later historical periods that are difficult to reconcile with the CPIA’s intended scope and the statute’s emphasis on targeted remedies.
Where the restrictions cover commonplace categories (for example, categories of coins and other small objects that are numerous and widely distributed), the CPIA requires the Committee to scrutinize whether the “cultural significance” and “jeopardy from pillage” determinations can plausibly be met for the category as a whole, and whether U.S. import restrictions (as opposed to other measures) can be shown to provide substantial benefit.
Determination One: Greece has not shown that its cultural patrimony, as defined by the current designated list, is in jeopardy from pillage in a way that justifies U.S. import restrictions.
There is no serious dispute that looting, theft, and trafficking occur in Greece, as they do in many countries, and recent reporting confirms sporadic criminal activity, including small groups using metal detecting and clandestine excavation, and thefts or attempted sales of cultural material.[6] (It is worth noting that the referenced article (cited below) on the capture of a ring “attempting to sell dozens of antiquities” does not question their authenticity, aside from the dime-a-dozen ceramic oil lamps and fragmentary ‘bits’, everything else is a brazen fake. Three complete Cycladic figures, forsooth!) Yet the CPIA question is not whether crimes occur; it is whether Greece has shown that the specific categories restricted by the designated list are in jeopardy from pillage, and that the U.S. market and U.S. import restrictions are a meaningful lever against that pillage.
Recent reporting illustrates a recurring problem for the showing of “jeopardy.” A very significant portion of reported Greek cultural-property crime involves domestic theft from churches or local repositories, or opportunistic activity facilitated by local conditions. There is no evidence that these are linked to any current U.S.-driven demand. Nor are they connected to the wide range of materials in the designated list.
For example, reporting on trafficking of religious artifacts has emphasized thefts and vandalism at places of worship, with documented incidents over multiple years.[7] Such patterns underscore the importance of domestic security and internal controls – precisely the “self-help” encouraged by the CPIA. This localized criminal activity is not connected to trade with the U.S. and there is no evidence that U.S. border restrictions on vast categories of material are the appropriate or effective remedy to Greece’s domestic problems.
Moreover, for coinage and small portable objects in particular, the “jeopardy” analysis must confront the basic archaeological and numismatic reality that coin circulation is regional and transnational, with millions of coins moving across borders throughout antiquity and the medieval period, and with findspots often unknown or undocumented for coins circulating in legitimate collections for decades. Scholarly work on coin production and circulation in medieval Greece and the wider region describes complex patterns of monetary movement that are not congruent with the CPIA’s “first discovered within” requirement.[8] Absent a category-specific showing that current pillage of coins “of Greece” (however defined) is substantially driven by U.S. demand, and that import restrictions are a principal deterrent, the first determination cannot be satisfied for that category. The broader the list, the more acute this defect becomes.
Determination Two: Greece has not demonstrated adequate “self-help” measures commensurate with the breadth of restrictions sought.
The CPIA’s second determination is not satisfied by the existence of heritage laws on paper. Greece has extensive heritage legislation, including Law 3028/2002. Scholarship assessing this law’s operation has identified strengths as well as deficiencies in effectiveness and implementation.[9] A system can be legally strict and still struggle with enforcement, site security, inventories, resourcing, and transparency. This is especially true under the austerity conditions and budget constraints that Greece has experienced since 2009.
These conditions matter directly to CPIA “self-help.” If lack of resources and institutional failings contribute to making sites, storerooms, churches, or small local collections vulnerable, then a renewal request should be accompanied by evidence of improvements in inventories, security, inspections, prosecutions, and public reporting. Without this, CPAC cannot accurately assess whether Greece is using the domestic tools it already possesses.[10]
Despite repeated renewals, Greece has not provided a transparent accounting tied to the designated list. This is not a technicality. The CPIA contemplates a reciprocal arrangement: for the U.S. to impose an extraordinary border measure, the requesting State must demonstrate concrete, sustained internal stewardship and enforcement. Without publicly verifiable “self-help” evidence related to the breadth of restrictions sought, extension is not supported under the law.
Determination Three: Greece has not shown that U.S. import restrictions provide “substantial benefit” as part of a concerted international response, or that less drastic remedies are unavailable.
The third CPIA determination requires a showing that U.S. import restrictions would be of substantial benefit in deterring pillage and that remedies less drastic are not available. This is the core proportionality Congress required.
Here, the record is notably thin, and what is visible publicly points in the opposite direction. Greek art moves across multiple jurisdictions and marketplaces, and major enforcement operations against cultural goods trafficking are multinational in character, involving European and international police.
Up to a dozen European countries have been involved in a series of ‘Pandora’ “international law enforcement campaigns to combat the trafficking of stolen art, antiquities, and cultural goods,” and have made thousands of police and customs stops and found hundreds of worthless tourist trinkets, thousands of junk coins, bullet casings and WWI and WWII finds dug up by metal detectorists. Occasional seizures have been made of valuable objects were stolen from European museums by ordinary thieves – but since it began in 2016, the program has not shown that archaeological sites were being looted for antiquities for the U.S. market.
Despite the scope of these operations, some involving police in a dozen countries, they have made few actual arrests and even fewer prosecutions.[11] That reality undermines the claim that there is widespread, significant looting in the EU and the Balkans of the type the CPIA is intended to thwart. The problems are primarily local, not international.
The claim that a broad U.S.-only category embargo is the necessary or decisive tool cannot be sustained in these circumstances. Furthermore, the results of the Pandora-type sweeps at least support the idea that less drastic, more targeted remedies should be sought. In contrast, for serious crimes, the best results come from intelligence-led investigations, joint policing operations, and transparent object- and theft-registries that allow rapid identification and seizure of specific stolen items.
The experience of repeated renewals also demonstrates the practical weakness of the “substantial benefit” claim with respect to an overbroad list. The more the designated list expands to cover commonplace categories (including many coins and other mass-quantity objects), the more it necessarily shifts from a deterrence tool into a compliance trap for legitimate exchange.
Professional numismatic reporting on the Greece extension argues against expansions affecting categories of coinage. What is being restricted is often the very material most likely to be long-circulating, commonly found, and difficult to document to modern expectations.[12] That is not an incidental consequence; it is a direct outcome of using a blunt border instrument for categories where the “substantial benefit” showing is weakest.
Less drastic remedies are not only available; they are already in use and are demonstrably relevant. Greece is subject to EU cultural-goods frameworks for export outside the EU, and it participates in multinational law-enforcement efforts. Renewing and expanding U.S. import restrictions without demonstrated effectiveness or a showing that such restrictions are necessary in the first place, is contrary to the statute.
Determination Four: The restrictions are not consistent with the general international interest in cultural interchange for scientific, cultural, and educational purposes.
The CPIA requires that import restrictions be consistent with the general interest of the international community in interchange of cultural property for scientific, cultural, and educational purposes. This factor is routinely treated as a box-checking exercise focused on whether any loans occurred. That approach is inconsistent with the statute’s text and purpose. For interchange to be meaningful, it must include not only high-profile “blockbuster” loans, but also routine scholarly circulation, study collections, research access, and the ability of museums and academic institutions to exchange material legally and transparently.
Overbroad designated lists impede exactly that. They shift the presumption against lawful movement of wide categories of objects even where the objects have been in legitimate circulation for decades, are widely held in collections worldwide, or are common research materials (including coins). They discourage educational exchange by increasing transaction risk, insurance complexity, and border uncertainty, and they chill donations and long-term stewardship by U.S. institutions.
Our past testimony on the original Greece proposal and its later renewal submissions emphasized that CPIA agreements should not become sweeping embargoes. We repeatedly pressed for a more balanced approach that supports legitimate exchange and avoids unnecessarily broad restrictions. Those concerns apply with even greater force now, given the expansion of restrictions beyond what was initially contemplated and the persistent lack of a persuasive “substantial benefit” showing.
The designated list is overbroad on its face and exceeds what CPAC can responsibly recommend under CPIA principles.
The present designated list for Greece, as implemented by the U.S. government, is exceptionally broad in chronology, media, and object types, including coinage and later historical material.[13] A list this expansive creates two problems that go to the heart of CPIA compliance. First, it creates a mismatch between the statute’s targeted remedy and an embargo-like regime for nearly all portable material associated with Greece across vast swaths of history. Second, it makes it extremely difficult -often impossible – for CPAC to conclude, with any intellectual and evidentiary integrity, that each covered category satisfies the CPIA’s four determinations.
This is not a new objection. In the earlier CPAC proceedings for Greece, we objected to overbreadth and urged restraint, warning against precisely the kind of expansive regime the list has since become. CCP urges CPAC to treat those objections as Congress intended: as an invitation to re-center the statute’s limits and to reject “designated list inflation” that persists through serial renewals without any demonstrable deterrent effect.
Requested action.
For these reasons, CCP requests that CPAC recommend against granting Greece’s request for a five-year extension of the current U.S.-Greece cultural property agreement. If CPAC nevertheless recommends any extension, it should, at minimum, recommend a materially narrowed agreement, with coinage and other broadly circulating, difficult-to-attribute categories removed or strictly limited to at-risk subtypes supported by evidence. It should condition any continuation on publicly verifiable benchmarks for “self-help,” including transparent reporting on thefts, prosecutions, inventories, and concrete measures addressing Greece’s domestic vulnerabilities that are repeatedly implicated in reports on Greek cultural-property crime.
Respectfully submitted,
Kate Fitz Gibbon, Executive Director, Committee for Cultural Policy
[1] Committee for Cultural Policy, Inc. POB 4881, Santa Fe, NM 87502, publishes Cultural Property News, www.culturalproprtynews.org, a free, online art and cultural heritage news magazine, and publications on international laws on cultural heritage at Cultural Property Law, www.culturalpropertylaw.org.
[2] Proposal To Extend the Cultural Property Agreement Between the United States and Greece, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-01-26/html/2026-01405.htm/ (Federal Register notice of CPAC’s March 3–5, 2026 meeting and agenda including consideration of a Greece agreement extension; see also the Department of State public notice materials accompanying the meeting and comment process.)
[3] Extension and Amendment of Import Restrictions Imposed on Archaeological and Ethnological Material of Greece, 11/22/2021, 86 FR 66164, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/11/22/2021-25384/extension-and-amendment-of-import-restrictions-imposed-on-archaeological-and-ethnological-material/
[4] Association of Art Museum Directors statement on the 2010 Greece MOU https://cms.aamd.org/sites/default/files/key-issue/testimony%20LFeinberg.pdf, and 2016 renewal, https://culturalpropertynews.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/AAMD-CPAC-2016-Greece-MOU.pdf (Discussing CPIA determinants and problems with enforcement and cultural exchange.)
[5] See Briggs, Aaron Kyle (2007) “Consequences of the Met-Italy Accord for the International Restitution of Cultural Property,” Chicago Journal of International Law: Vol. 7: No. 2, Article 15, 631-632, 634-636. Available at: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cjil/vol7/iss2/15, (Legal scholarship discussing CPIA statutory requirements, congressional intent, and the difficulty of reconciling expansive MOUs with the CPIA’s plain meaning and procedural/substantive constraints.)
[6] “Dozens of ancient artifacts seized in Greek island smuggling raid,” AP, April 24, 2025 https://apnews.com/article/greece-antiquities-smuggling-crete-police-59b29b3b9aaa9cd403d95526d09e0071 (Reporting on a Greek antiquities smuggling ring and seizures of artifacts and detecting equipment in Athens and Crete.)
[7] Marina Raffenberg, “In Greece, an abbot is arrested for trafficking religious artifacts,” Le Monde, September 30, 2025, https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/09/30/in-greece-an-abbot-is-arrested-for-trafficking-religious-artifacts_6745918_4.html (Reporting on trafficking of religious artifacts and a government-reported scale of thefts/vandalism affecting places of worship (2015–2023).)
[8] International Association of Professional Numismatists (IAPN), Submission to Cultural Property Advisory Committee Regarding Proposal to Extend Cultural Property Agreement with Greece, 91 Fed. Reg. 3291, January 26, 2026), (Citing to academic numismatic scholarship on coin production and circulation in Greece and the wider region, illustrating transregional circulation and the evidentiary limits of attributing “first discovered within” to coins.)
[9] Richey-Lowe, David. (2022). On the Archaeological Dimensions of Law 3028/2002 – A Consideration of the Effectiveness of the Greek Legislative Approach to Cultural Heritage. 10.25949/21514368.v1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/384540492_On_the_Archaeological_Dimensions_of_Law_30282002_-_A_Consideration_of_the_Effectiveness_of_the_Greek_Legislative_Approach_to_Cultural_Heritage.
[10] Plantzos, Dimitris. “Crisis, Austerity Measures and beyond: Archaeology in Greece since the Global Financial Crisis.” Archaeological Reports, no. 64 (2017): 171–80. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330028631_Crisisausterity_measures_and_beyond_Archaeology_in_Greece_since_the_global_financial_crisis.
[11] “Network that trafficked stolen antiquities across Europe dismantled with 35 arrests,” AP, 11/20/2025, https://apnews.com/article/bulgaria-art-smuggling-europol-arrests-d20785a42856de1007ebfb955b051bf1
See this recent AP report on a “trafficking network” engaged both in money laundering and trafficking “stolen antiquities” that appears to have seized only items stolen from museums (not looted from archaeological sites). The network was stated to have operated for 16 years out of the Balkans and to have grossed $1 billion according to a Bulgarian prosecutor. The photographs accompanying the report showed several dubious groupings of medals and coins in professional packaging as if from a shop, some gold pocket and bracelet watches, modern jewelry and a couple of crude purportedly medieval objects, likely fakes, all of which appeared unmarketable. One can only assume that the referenced $1 billion had to do with money laundering, because altogether, the objects shown appeared to be worth only about $2000.00, on a good day.
[12] Supra, note 7.
[13] Supra note 2.
