Comment on DOS-2026-0628-0001
Committee for Cultural Policy, IncOpposeAdvocacy
Summary: The Committee for Cultural Policy, Inc. and the Global Heritage Alliance jointly oppose the renewal of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Albania regarding import restrictions on cultural property. They argue that Albania has failed to meet the four statutory determinations required by the Cultural Property Implementation Act (CPIA), citing a lack of evidence regarding current pillage, insufficient domestic funding and implementation of laws, a lack of demonstrated U.S. market impact, and a failure to foster meaningful cultural interchange.
Dear Dr. Jones and Members of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee to the President:
The Committee for Cultural Policy and Global Heritage Alliance jointly submit the attached testimony on the extension of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the imposition of import restrictions between the United States and the Republic of Albania. We have addressed below whether the requests meet the legal criteria set by Congress for import restrictions under the Cultural Property Implementation Act.
However, the failure of the Department of State to include any facts establishing the State Party’s continuing need for import restrictions under the Cultural Property Implementation Act (CPIA) hampers our ability to comment fully. This lack of evidentiary support for renewal of import restrictions appears to reflect Albania’s inattention to the statute and - perhaps - CPAC’s administrators’ failure to make the CPIA’s requirements clear to the requestor.
The current restrictions entered into force in 2022 and are scheduled to expire on February 28, 2027. Public comment is a necessary component of the regulatory process of renewal of an agreement under the CPIA.
It is clear that the designated list is exceptionally broad. It covers archaeological material from the Middle Paleolithic through the Ottoman period, approximately 300,000 B.C. to A.D. 1750, and ethnological material from the Byzantine, Medieval, and Ottoman periods, A.D. 400 to 1913. The ethnological categories include architectural elements, funerary material, ritual and ceremonial objects, paintings, written records, textiles, weapons, and armor.
This is not a narrow restriction on a few clearly identified classes of objects demonstrated to be subject to present pillage and U.S. demand. It is a territorial embargo extending across hundreds of thousands of years of human activity and across the heritage of many ethnic, religious, linguistic, and regional communities.
Albania is an important partner of the United States and possesses a rich archaeological and cultural patrimony. That is not the statutory test. The CPIA does not authorize renewal because a country is friendly or its cultural heritage is important, because looting has occurred in the past, or because an agreement is diplomatically desirable. Renewal requires the same four determinations required for an initial agreement. The public record must show that Albania’s cultural patrimony is presently in jeopardy from pillage; that Albania has taken measures consistent with the 1970 UNESCO Convention to protect that patrimony; that U.S. import restrictions would substantially deter a serious situation of pillage and that less drastic remedies are unavailable; and that the restrictions are consistent with the international community’s interest in the interchange of cultural property for scientific, cultural, and educational purposes.
The public record does not satisfy those determinations. Since 2018, Albania has a modern statute and a centralized heritage bureaucracy. Albania has not adequately funded and implemented its own protective system, or that the restrictions have promoted meaningful cultural interchange with American museums, scholars, students, collectors, religious communities, and the public.