Restitutions Committee (Netherlands)

show This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Dutch. (December 2018) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Dutch article. Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 979 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary Content in this edit is translated from the existing Dutch Wikipedia article at [[:nl:Restitutiecommissie]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|nl|Restitutiecommissie}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Restitutions Committee logo

The Dutch Restitutions Committee (nl: Restitutiecommissie) was established in 2001 to deal with claims for the restitution of Nazi-era looted works of art to their original owners or their descendants.^[1][2] The rulings of the committee have been controversial with some restitution advocates arguing that they are unfair to claimants.^[3][4]

Of the five international Restitution Committees that exist (UK, France, Austria & Germany) the Dutch Restitution Committee has the lowest restitution rate, returning only about one third of the artworks claimed. Recently the Restitution Committee introduced the controversial Balance of Interest test, which takes into consideration the desire of the (typically government owned) museum to keep a looted artwork, rather than return it to the rightful claimants. This resulted in the Committee's refusal to restitute a number of important artworks and led to international criticism at what many viewed as a self-serving mechanism. Ambassador Stuart Eisenstadt, the author of the Washington Principles, recently indicated at an international conference in Berlin, that the "Balance of Interest test in not in accordance with the Washington Principles" and indicated that this mechanism should no longer be used.

Presidents[]

• 2001-2004: J. M. Polak
• 2004-2007: B. J. Asscher
• 2007-2008: R. Herrmann
• 2009-2016: W. J. M. Davids
• 2016–present: A. Hammerstein

References[]

External links[]

• Official website

This Netherlands-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by .

• v
• t