In December 2013, the then Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, extended an invitation to the UK on behalf of Greece. The proposal was for Britain to sit at the same table with Greece and negotiate over the sculptures of the Parthenon. There was no response from the United Kingdom to the UNESCO letter. Or almost never.

Ten months after the invitation, in October 2014, UNESCO members met again. Some Member States expressed dissatisfaction with the behavior of the British side in response to the request of the Organization. This climate has given Greece the opportunity to invite UNESCO to accept a new recommendation from the Commission, which obliges Member States to respond to invitations to mediation within six months. “The recommendation, which I made on the spot and which was voted unanimously, committed the UK to enter into a response process. Four months later, she posted her answer on the British Museum website, even before this answer was officially sent to UNESCO and Greece, ”lawyer and professor of law at the University of Nicosia Irini Stamatudi, who had the original idea for mediation, tells K.

The incident described by the lawyer is one of many stories told by participants in international forums about the uncompromising position of the British side, which has been maintained over the years. The British Museum, England’s most powerful body of cultural diplomacy, not only did not change its position, but from time to time asked the Greek negotiators to fill out one of the applications for an antiques loan if they wanted to see the sculptures in Athens.

That is why many, including Ms. Stamatudi, see a significant semiological shift in the rhetoric of the British Museum, expressed by its head, former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, and also through its representatives, who now openly declare that they are looking for a “new partnership for the Parthenon and that “constructive discussions” with Greece are ongoing.

Before the change of time, we had some facts that were neither canceled nor refuted: Osborne’s statements about an “agreement” that could be made with Greece, and negotiations undertaken by the Maximus Palace staff with the head of the British Museum. In the meantime, in 2022, the Phagan fragment was reunited with the Parthenon sculptures in the Acropolis Museum, and at the end of the year it was announced that three more fragments of the monument would be returned from the Vatican. In terms of negotiations, we are “stuck” in trying to “square the circle”, that is, to find a suitable legal formula for the return of the Sculptors. But that seems to have changed. changed;

Last week we had a “flurry” of publications from the international media based in the UK, which, although not in the same words, described the same thing: a) that Osonupo is entering into a cultural exchange agreement with Greece and b) that part of the Sculptors will return in the form of a loan.

But the devil is in the details. The Bloomberg international agency included two museums (Bretanico and Acropolis) in the framework of the agreement and spoke about a rotational exhibition of sculptors in Greece, which was denied by sources in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Acropolis Museum. The Daily Telegraph wrote that the agreement between Britain and Greece provided for the long-term lease of some of the Sculptors in exchange for the “Rider of Artemisia” or the golden “Mask of Agamemnon”, while the main article in the London Times he spoke of reaching a compromise on the basis of an “indefinite loan” of the Sculptors , congratulating George Osborne, who, according to the newspaper, will soon announce the agreement.

The Greek side continues to state that it is not discussing any form of borrowing.

How does the Greek government interpret these leaks? “Either this is an attempt to spin the topic and create an atmosphere, or they want to burn it,” sources from Maximos Palace, knowledgeable in this matter, tell K, and insist that since the last visit of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to London at the end November last year, there were no new communications between the two sides. The discussions then took place in a “creative atmosphere of mutual understanding” and, as we were told, no new communication is planned.

The same sources emphasize that for the Greek side, “credit does not exist as a legal form.” Instead, the Greek offer made to the British was an agreement that would resemble the return of the Fagan fragment from Palermo. “Leaving aside the issue of ‘credit’ and property,” they note, adding that on this issue they have met with the reaction of the British side, which does not want any agreement to be recorded as a ‘deposit’ of Greece.

“Semiotics sometimes also defines essence,” they emphasize, and for this reason it is believed that there is still a long way to go. Some in Megaros Maximos believe that the matter will not be over until the election, perhaps wishing to satisfy SYRIZA’s claim of electoral games with the Glipts.

One of the scenarios considered is “symbolic movement”, i.e. return the object initially, but as they reiterated, the problem is not with scale. However, the sources leading the negotiations noted that it was not about specific exhibits that Greece intends to send to the British Museum. “There is no catalog of exhibits,” they tell us.

Those familiar with the matter reiterate that this is a complex legal case that can be negotiated at the political level, but must be framed in a legal document where the conditions have different weight.

But what if the British side is preparing some kind of spectacular move or statement, as the London Times writes? That is, if George Osborne takes the lead in the movements and publicly announces that the British offer to the Greeks is a “loan in perpetuity”? We are returning them to you, but know that they are ours. “If the British drop the ball on Greece in this way, it will require sensible management, not hasty responses,” says Irini Stamatudi, who is not involved in the current negotiations. “If I had to answer, I would say that the return is not an end in itself. The goal is to reunite the Marbles in their place of origin, and this requires permanence.”