Today's Federal Register has announced that the Cultural Property Advisory Committee, made up entirely of Biden appointees, will consider a new Cultural Property Agreement (CPA) for Romania and renewals of current agreements with Albania and Nigeria.
Once again, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and its Cultural Heritage Center will be prioritizing "soft power" giveaways to foreign governments over protecting the private property and due process rights of American collectors and displaced minority populations. This time, the beneficiaries may be different, but many of the issues remain the same.
Coin collectors will again face the prospect of having to deal with grossly overbroad import restrictions on widely collected coin types. Past import restrictions on "Albanian coins" demonstrate the problem. Recent import restrictions have taken a maximalist approach that "designates" virtually all coin types that may have circulated within a given country down to the mid 18th Century, including many coin types that circulated regionally or internationally in bulk. Once "designated," under current procedures US Customs and Border Protection (CPB) can "assume" such coins were illicitly exported from that country, even where they were legitimately bought, sold and legally exported from our major trading partners in the European Union (EU). The issue is even more egregious for EU countries like Romania. EU law binding on EU countries recognizes the rights of EU countries to export cultural goods. Yet, CPB will detain, seize and repatriate coins and other artifacts to EU countries with CPAs with the US, including Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece and Italy, even where they are legally exported from other EU countries like Germany with or without an export permit as permitted under local law. It's as if the State Department and CBP do not believe the EU exists!
Another major issue is CPAs being used to gain US government recognition of foreign government rights to the cultural heritage of displaced minority populations, most recently for Turkey. Here, it is likely Romania will use this CPA to gain US approval for its control over the cultural heritage of its displaced Hungarian population from Transylvania. Moreover, a renewal of the CPA with Nigeria raises similar issues for Biafrans and other minority groups within that country.
Adding insult to injury injury, the State Department requires public comments about these CPAs be made on or before July 5, 2026, the day after our country's 250th Anniversary of Independence. As of this morning, the Regulations.gov docket is not yet accepting comments. Nor does the State Department Cultural Heritage Center's website provide any promised additional information about the requests.
