CINOA feedback on U.S. cultural property MOUs, particularly as they apply to coins and widely circulating artifacts, covering Egypt, Greece, and Bolivia.
Submission of CINOA
Confédération Internationale des Négociants en OEuvres d’Art to the Cultural Property Advisory Committee Docket No. DOS-2026-0133
CINOA submits these comments to highlight concerns regarding the scope, designated lists, and enforcement of U.S. cultural property MOUs, particularly as they apply to coins and widely circulating artifacts, covering Egypt, Greece, and Bolivia.
CINOA represents professional dealers in art, antiquities, and cultural objects operating in regulated markets worldwide, and supports proportionate and evidence-based measures to combat illicit trafficking in cultural property. At the same time, CINOA emphasizes that lawful collecting and trade play an important role in fostering education, scholarship, and appreciation of diverse cultures, allowing collectors, museums, and the public to study and engage with cultural heritage from around the world.
While supporting efforts to protect heritage, CINOA remains concerned that overbroad designated lists and current enforcement practices create legal uncertainty, impose disproportionate burdens on lawful trade, collecting, and scholarship, and are systemic across the MOUs under review. CINOA urges CPAC to address these concerns before any renewals.
- Enforcement, Due Process, and Scope of Designated Lists
CINOA is concerned that the enforcement of U.S. cultural property MOUs combines systemic due process issues with overly broad designated lists, particularly for coins and small, portable artifacts.
Key concerns include:
• Coins and artifacts with wide circulation: Coins were mass-produced and circulated widely; assigning them to a single modern nation-state is historically inaccurate. The same applies to many small artifacts that moved extensively through trade networks.
• Over inclusive lists: Broad designated lists capture large categories of material that have circulated lawfully for decades or centuries, failing to target actual looting or illicit trafficking.
• CPIA Import Restrictions and EU Lawful Export: With respect to MOUs with EU Member States—including Greece, Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Italy—CINOA is concerned that U.S. import restrictions under the CPIA are frequently applied without adequate consideration of whether the material was lawfully exported from the State Party at the time of export, as required by statute. Coins and other cultural objects that were legally exported decades ago and subsequently circulated lawfully within the EU are nonetheless detained or seized solely because they fall within a Designated List category, creating legal uncertainty, unnecessary seizures and disproportionate risk for lawful trade.
• Seizures based solely on typology: CBP routinely detains and seizes objects simply because they appear on a designated list, without meaningful consideration of historical circulation, lawful export from third countries, or good-faith acquisition.
• Judicial precedent: The Fourth Circuit has allowed seizures based solely on an object’s type, without evidence of illicit origin. This effectively exposes lawful collectors and dealers to unnecessary risk and reinforces overly broad enforcement.
These combined enforcement and scope issues create systemic legal uncertainty and impose disproportionate burdens on lawful trade, collecting, and scholarship.
The following sections highlight how these concerns, along with other key considerations, manifest in the MOUs with Egypt, Greece, and Bolivia. The concerns related to Greece also mirror those relating to MOUs with other EU member states of Bulgaria, Cyprus and Italy. - Egypt
a) Confiscatory Legal Framework: Egypt maintained a legal antiquities and coin market until the early 1980s, when Law No. 117 (1983) nationalized all antiquities and restricted private ownership to mere possession of inherited objects. This effectively dismantled the legal market and created a confiscatory system incompatible with U.S. property principles.
b) Overbroad Designated Lists: Recent expansions of designated lists to include Roman Imperial coins minted in Alexandria and Byzantine coins are especially problematic, as these circulated widely and cannot reasonably be presumed to originate from Egypt. - Greece and Other EU Member States with MOUs (Bulgaria, Cyprus, Italy)
a) CPIA Import Restrictions and Historically Lawful Export
Enforcement of U.S. import restrictions under the CPIA with respect to Greece and other EU Member States with MOUs does not consistently account for the non-retroactive nature of national export laws or the requirement that restricted material must have been illegally exported from the State Party after the effective date of the agreement. In the case of Greece in particular, many coins and other cultural objects were lawfully exported prior to the tightening of export controls in the early 1980s and have remained outside Greece for decades.
For such material, no export licence was required at the time of export, and no retroactive documentation can lawfully exist. Nevertheless, coins and other objects may be detained or seized in the United States solely because they fall within a Designated List, notwithstanding evidence of lawful export and long-established presence outside the source country. This application of import restrictions extends beyond the intent of the CPIA, which is directed at preventing the import of material illegally exported after the relevant restrictions took effect, not at restricting long-circulating, lawfully exported objects.
b) Coins and Long-Established Market Circulation
These concerns are particularly acute with respect to coins, which were mass-produced, widely circulated, and traded extensively across regions for centuries. Greek coins, including ancient and later issues, were commonly exported and collected internationally well before modern export prohibitions and long before the entry into force of the U.S.–Greece MOU. Treating such coins as presumptively restricted based solely on typology or national attribution fails to reflect historical reality and the evidentiary requirements of the CPIA.
Current enforcement practice effectively places the burden on importers to disprove illicit export in cases where the coins’ presence outside Greece clearly predates both modern Greek export restrictions and U.S. import controls. This approach risks transforming Designated Lists into de facto ownership claims, rather than targeted tools to deter recent looting and trafficking, and imposes disproportionate burdens on lawful numismatic trade, collecting, and scholarship.
c) De Facto Treatment of EU Member States as Isolated Jurisdictions
In applying CPIA import restrictions, U.S. enforcement practice frequently treats Greece and other EU Member States as if they were legally isolated jurisdictions, without adequate recognition that cultural objects lawfully exported decades ago may subsequently circulate freely within the EU. Objects exported to the United States from one EU Member State are often assessed without meaningful consideration of whether they were lawfully exported from the original State Party at a time when no export restriction applied.
These concerns have been repeatedly raised by stakeholders during prior CPAC review and renewal processes without resolution. Failure to distinguish between recent illicit export and long-established lawful circulation undermines legitimate trade and cultural exchange while providing little demonstrable benefit to the protection of archaeological heritage. - Bolivia
a) Scope of Restricted Material: CINOA has consistently raised concerns in prior CPAC submissions about overly broad import restrictions on archaeological and ethnological materials, which can undermine lawful trade, scholarship, and public engagement with cultural heritage. Applying these principles to the Bolivian MOU, CINOA urges that its scope be narrowed rather than expanded, and that Spanish colonial or early Republican coins remain excluded.
b) Historical Circulation: Such coins circulated widely throughout the Americas and were legal tender in the United States until 1857. Including them would be historically and legally unjustified. - Conclusion and Recommendations
CINOA urges CPAC to take the following country-specific actions:
1. Egypt – Do not renew the MOU unless designated lists are revised to exclude coins and artifacts that circulated widely. CBP should not act as an enforcement arm of Egypt’s confiscatory collection laws.
2. Greece and Other EU Member States with MOUs (Bulgaria, Cyprus, Italy) – Although each MOU is a bilateral agreement under the CPIA between the United States and the individual State Party (not the EU), import restrictions must be applied consistent with the statutory requirement that covered material be illegally exported after the agreement’s effective date and in a manner that respects EU export law governing the lawful movement of cultural goods within the Union. CPAC should clarify that U.S. Customs and Border Protection should not seize coins or other cultural objects legally exported from another EU Member State solely because they appear on a designated list, and should adopt clear evidentiary guidance recognizing long-established lawful market circulation as sufficient to rebut presumptions of illegal export where no restriction applied at the time of removal. Imports legally exported from a sister EU Member State should be treated as presumptively lawful. This approach reflects the EU’s harmonized export regime—adopted after enactment of the CPIA—while preserving CBP’s authority to investigate where probable cause exists to believe an item was illicitly exported from Greece after the 2011 MOU’s effective date.
3. Bolivia – CINOA urges that its scope be limited to items with clear archaeological significance, and that Spanish colonial or early Republican coins remain excluded. - For all MOUs, CINOA further recommends:
• Reform enforcement procedures so that typology alone is never sufficient for seizure.
• CPAC should adopt clear evidentiary guidance for coins and other widely circulating objects, recognizing long-established lawful market circulation as sufficient to rebut presumptions of illegal export where no restriction applied at the time of removal.
• For all MOUs with EU Member States, imports legally exported from another EU Member State under the EU’s harmonized export regime should be treated as presumptively lawful. This presumption would not limit U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s authority to investigate shipments where probable cause exists to believe an item was illicitly exported after the MOU’s effective date.
• Revise overbroad designated lists to avoid undue impact on lawful collecting, scholarship, and the art market.
Absent these reforms, the proposed renewals would impose disproportionate burdens on lawful trade, collecting, and scholarship without clear benefit to the protection of cultural heritage.