Comment on DOS-2026-0628-0001

Dear Cultural Property Advisory Committee, I write to state my opposition to the new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Romania and renewal of the MOUs with Albania and Nigeria as currently written. No action should be taken until they can be carefully reviewed for compliance with the CPIA and revised so as to properly serve the objectives of the CPIA while also protecting the legitimate rights of American citizens. In particular the requirements that there be a genuine cultural property emergency and that reasonable efforts have been made on the part of the requesting country should be examined more closely in these cases prior to granting an MOU or a renewal. The breadth of the coverage of these MOU’s should also be examined for reasonableness along with the burden of enforcement placed on governmental agencies and the burden of proof placed on US Citizens. In the case of coins the idea that any modern country can lay a claim of ownership to currency that circulated freely throughout a large geographic region long before that country even existed seems preposterous or at least very difficult to justify. I also don’t understand how we can expect our enforcement personnel to instantly achieve and apply the highly specialized expertise required when they already have responsibilities of a much higher priority such as national security. It is tempting to ease the burden of investigating a requesting country’s claim of need and the burden of knowledge for enforcement simply by granting MOU’s that are so broad as to effectively prevent anything entering the United States that could ever have come from the requesting country and placing the entire burden of proving otherwise on ordinary US citizens. As a practical matter that requirement is virtually impossible to satisfy and turns the doctrine of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ on its head. While I applaud the good work done by the Committee in its administration of the CPIA the value of that work must be balanced against any harms done to our citizens. In that regard I believe that the interests of our citizens must always come before the interests of other countries. Requests which potentially infringe on the rights of our citizens must be scrutinized very carefully and meet a very high threshold of value and validity before being granted. Respectfully