France has introduced a new law to make it easier for countries to reclaim cultural artifacts held in French public collections.

Until now, France has dealt with these requests one by one, often requiring a separate law before an object could be returned; the new legislation sets out a process to make it less complicated.

The debate gained traction back in 2017, when French President Emmanuel Macron said that African heritage should no longer be kept out of reach of African audiences.

France has already sent several major artifacts back home, including some 26 royal treasures returned to Benin in 2021. But each of those cases had to go through a separate political and legal process.

Historian Pascal Blanchard told CGTN the law should make restitution less reliant on the French President or the government.

"It's a real historic text because it's the first text that, globally, makes it so that it will no longer be the 'prince's deed' – so the President of the Republic's – a sort of decision every time, a decision in the face of a claim, but to set up a process that will be valid in full autonomy from the political power to manage to respond to structured requests," Blanchard explained.

It means that countries will still have to make a formal request, and provide hard evidence showing how an object was taken… and how it ended up in a French collection.

The law covers objects taken between 1815 and 1972. It's also not limited to Africa or former French colonies, meaning objects taken from countries such as China could be considered as well.

But building a case could still take years, especially when records are missing or unclear. In some instances, countries may also struggle to find the money, researchers and legal experts needed to pursue their claim.

"The second limit that I see is that no resources are accompanying this law allocated to museums to identify within French public collections the pieces, the cultural property that could be debated, but in the end, it's solely the burden of the requester to be able to do it," Blanchard said.

As part of the law, France can also request guarantees that the returned objects will be protected, preserved, and made available to the public.

"You see that the law doesn't do everything," Blanchard added. "The law must always be accompanied by a political will, by an institutional, technical, but also financial will."

While the law has created a better path for countries seeking the return of their cultural heritage, the next question is, just how many of those requests will actually end with objects being sent home.