Economist: Probably return in 2025 the Parthenon Sculptures to Greece

In 2025 the Parthenon Sculptures “may eventually be moved or at least the negotiations on their status make a big leap forward”.

This highlights, among other things, the Economist magazine in its annual publication of the next year’s forecasts, which this year is expected to be published electronically tomorrow 21/11 and printed next week. Many arguments against the return of the Marbles have been overturned. The idea that the British Museum is their only responsible guardian always seemed false, even more so after the accusation that one of his staff members stole nearly 2,000 antiquities and sold them to eBay.

Similarly strong is the change in the common feeling: a YouGov poll conducted in 2023 found that 49% of the British are in favour of their return and just 15% believe they should remain.

The British Museum itself, and the government, also seem ready. A 1963 law forbids the museum to grant its treasures and the government is unlikely to revise it. But both the museum’s president, George Osborne, and his reformative new boss, Nicholas Callinan, support a long-term loan of marble, borrowed perhaps other antiquities from Greece in return. The Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, has stated that he will not stand in the way. Many objects have returned to the Mediterranean countries from which they had been removed, such as Italy and Turkey. Activists in Cambodia have also convinced, among other things, the Metropolitan Museum of New York to return stolen sculptures. In Africa, Nigeria took the lead, securing dozens of bronze works—which had been stolen from the British by the Kingdom of Benin in 1897 by German, American and some British institutions. Objects also begin to return to Cameroon, Indonesia and Nepal. And Belgium recently gave the Democratic Republic of Congo a list of 80,000 objects in its African Museum, an obvious prelude to returns. Bénédicte Savoy, a historian who has advised French President Emmanuel Macron about the return of items to African countries, predicts that China, India and Vietnam will start making louder demands.