Greek PM to intensify push for return of Parthenon marbles

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Greece would intensify its campaign to recover the Parthenon marbles from the British Museum.

He said he would raise the issue “in the strongest terms” at a meeting with UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham. Mitsotakis said talks on a possible “hybrid” arrangement, under which the marbles could return in exchange for other antiquities, had made no progress.

The statement was Mitsotakis’s first acknowledgement that negotiations with the British Museum, involving its chair George Osborne, had failed to advance.

Athens links dispute to UK-EU relations

Mitsotakis said the artworks’ future could be connected to Burnham’s desire for closer relations between the United Kingdom and the European Union. He said the Parthenon sculptures were not only a Greek issue but also a European one.

Greece is considering a possible exchange in which other antiquities, previously not shown outside the country, could be sent to the UK during the planned closure and renovation of Athens’s National Archaeological Museum. Mitsotakis described the idea as a potential win-win arrangement.

Burnham’s position shifted after taking office

Burnham had supported returning the antiquities to Athens for 25 years. In 2023, while mayor of Greater Manchester, he called for their return “with no strings”, but after becoming prime minister said the dispute was for the British Museum to resolve.

Greek officials have expressed disappointment at the change. A Greek heritage expert who has provided legal advice to successive governments described the reversal as a major disappointment.

About 160 metres of the frieze has been held by the British Museum since 1816. The sculptures were created in the fifth century BC for the Parthenon, and their removal more than 200 years ago at the behest of Britain’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Lord Elgin, remains controversial.